


The Mayfield Redemption

by zulu



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, Character of Colour, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-31
Updated: 2010-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:42:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 48,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zulu/pseuds/zulu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I want to get better.  Whatever that means."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mayfield Redemption

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta, Troutkitty, and to my cheerleaders, bell, Shutterbug, and thedeadparrot.

[](http://community.livejournal.com/house_bigbang/34615.html)  
by [](http://sunset_my_house.livejournal.com/profile)[**sunset_my_house**](http://sunset_my_house.livejournal.com/)

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by [](http://usomitai.livejournal.com/profile)[**usomitai**](http://usomitai.livejournal.com/)

* * *

 

The bus stank of urine. House wrinkled his nose, at the smell and at the steps up to the fare box. The driver stared back at him, impassive and probably contributing to the locker room odour of stale sweat and shower mould. Nothing House hadn't been living in for three months. He'd worn Mayfield's version of the flip flop into the showers and he'd still picked up an infuriating dose of athlete's foot. At least the bus stink of transients and drunks smelled like going home.

House set his cane and climbed up, with a pause to drag his suitcase up after him. Each step reminded him just how much ibuprofen _sucked_. He clanked his only handful of change down into the fare box, hand slamming down over the slot to show his annoyance, but the driver handed him his newsprint transfer without a flicker of change in his expression. On this route, he couldn't help seeing all the crazies before.

A gaggle of Mayfield nurses going off-shift sat as close to the driver as possible, like chicks huddling under an indifferent hen's wing. They wore sensible shoes and their name tags displayed over their coats, because God forbid anyone should mistake them for the prisoners instead of the screws. The patients knew well enough to sit at the back like good little plebes, where the heavy exhaust farted from the tailpipe accumulated and a note of drowned dog joined the medley of smells. The bus pulled out before House found a seat, throwing him forward the last few steps. He sat heavily on the cracked plastic seat, fingers finding a gouge sutured with black electrical tape and bleeding stuffing.

This was what Nolan billed as personal growth.

"Consider this your chance at Zihuatanejo," he said. His amused half-smile one-upped House's prison humour to prove didn't bother him.

"The villa on the Pacific might not be cripple-accessible," House returned, hefting his cane. "And if you're casting yourself as the man who can get me things, hand over the letter."

"The Atlantic will have to do," Nolan agreed. "Do you have someone you can stay with for the first few days?" His hand rested on House's letter, in its envelope.

House tensed, eyes boring into Nolan's fingers, watching for the first sign that they'd twitch it back. "No," he said.

"I need you to be reachable."

"I have a phone."

"It shouldn't be a surprise that I'm going to be checking up on you," Nolan said. His voice was gentle, on the edge of sanctimonious, but he'd never slipped over that line. Nolan treated their sessions like a verbal chess game. More often than not he sounded like he was genuinely interested in seeing House's next move, and the fact that he didn't pretend to know if his mate was going to hold made him tolerable. Sometimes.

House sat back, rolling his cane over his lap with his palms. "Not Wilson."

Nolan raised his eyebrows and let one of his damn silences spin out. House glanced across Nolan's face, checking for some sign beyond faint, polite interest, and then looked down into his lap, gripping the cane's handle to stop himself from giving tells. Nolan would file this away with everything else he'd dragged out of House over the last few weeks, and lord it over him when House was least ready for the attack. "He doesn't deserve it," House muttered.

"The pleasure of your company, or the problem of it?"

House set his mouth and stared at Nolan, stubbornness taking hold of him so strongly it felt like he was going to choke on it. Christ, he hated talking. "What does my parole officer tell you?"

"They tell me you're there." Nolan shrugged, hands spreading over the surface of his desk, expansively indifferent. He was demanding less than House expected, and they both knew it, but that never stopped him from thinking he could ease past House's suspicions. Each word slow and deliberate, he said, "I want you to have someone."

House's shoulders knotted at the careless way Nolan didn't finish that sentence. "Not someone _who cares_? Someone _who'll check up on me_? Make sure I'm on my meds and report back if I cry?"

"No," Nolan said. He met House's eyes carefully, his own dark and sincere. "Just someone."

House rattled off a phone number. Nolan nodded, as if he trusted House not to lie.

* * *

Beasley threw him a party, and everybody hoped to _never see him again_, and they stuck him on a bus. No matter how much clowning and hugging House managed, with the sight of the grounds beyond Mayfield within his reach, his hands wouldn't stop trembling. He'd had coffee privileges for a month, but the swill they served to patients never even managed to give him palpitations. Feeling ridiculous and surly, he ignored the cold clench in his stomach and scowled as he packed. He scrawled a shaky signature for his contraband, and used most of his change in the cigarette machine in the front hallway before he remembered he didn't have his own lighter, only an empty matchbook.

The bus grumbled past the gates and out onto the main road. If House had been back there, it'd be group torture time. Stealing Lydia's car had been a reprieve from the forced labour of _sharing_, but the resentful boredom at least had the advantage of being the same day in and day out. House could almost hear the scrape of chairs into a circle, Beasley's sing-song _patients are like four-year-olds_ voice encouraging them to get it all off their chests. Just open up. Tell us about the time you tried to kill yourself, Greg. Nothing like a cheerful story to make everyone cry and hug and heal.

"You think you haven't healed?" Nolan asked, as if he was mildly surprised to hear it.

House was fucking sick of _mildly_. Nolan wasn't a moron; he knew what House meant. But he still orchestrated the ritual of dragging House's admissions out of him to be dissected. "I know I haven't."

"You didn't know that before you came here," Nolan said, letting House's contempt wash past him. "The fact that you're telling me matters."

After group was "quiet time," code for the doctors' and nurses' chance to gossip while they pretended to do paperwork. Then "free time," which was anything but, and "yard time" which regularly threw anyone who'd ever endured a P.E. class into an even deeper depression, and then they finally got fed. Every second Tuesday, supper was tuna surprise, which made it, in House's opinion, tuna completely predictable. Tuna boring.

A drizzly, half-hearted rain pattered against the bus windows, drops running down and obscuring the grey route back to Princeton. House gripped his suitcase handle, pressing his fingertips in chording progressions. He wouldn't get fed tonight unless he cooked for himself or conned a meal out of somebody. He had a feeling _somebody_ wasn't going to appreciate it.

"Do you _want_ to heal?" Nolan let that question fall into most of their sessions, at one point or another.

House lied half the time and deflected the other half, until he got fed up with Nolan's imperturbable insistence. "Yes!" he said, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. There might actually be some _point_ to this if only his obnoxiousness pushed Nolan's buttons. "Trying to catch me backsliding?"

"Just interested," Nolan said. "If you didn't want that, then this would be a waste of time."

It became part of the routine. The streetlights flickered and brightened, and the road faded into twilight dark until House could only chart it by the streaky taillights of the other cars through the rain-smeared window. His stomach rumbled, right on schedule. Locked in Mayfield was no different from the outs. He could count on everyone around him being themselves--being _idiots_, but in specific ways he could manipulate. It was boring as fuck, but it was _his_ routine. Once he'd gotten that far, what did it matter that he couldn't decide to order a pizza when he wanted or serenade his building with Wagner at three AM?

"Have you apologized to Wilson?"

House buried his chin on his chest, keeping his eyes on Nolan. Nolan loved to side-swipe House with those nasty little surprises just to see if he could send him lurching off-course. Playing bum's rush with the cripple, and it wasn't any less slimy because it was emotional instead of physical. "Did you apologize to your father because he had a massive, fatal stroke?"

Nolan swallowed, but he kept his gaze steady, his eyes gleaming a hint brighter. His voice stayed even. "You think the ways you've hurt Wilson were--what? Fated? Acts of God?"

Damn him. He was hurt, he was angry, but House couldn't drag it out of him and viciously point it out, because they both knew it. Nolan let House see it, freely, and then cultivated his patience until House stopped dwelling on the obvious. It was the only time he got really patronizing, when he silently reproached House for deflecting. _I know you can do better than that._

House shifted. Shrugged. "You told me to apologize to _someone_."

"Oh, I'm not saying there aren't a lot of people who deserve an apology from you." Nolan turned a wry look on him, sharing the understatement like it was their little joke. "The letter was a good start. But eventually, you're going to have to apologize to Wilson. Not because I ask you to. Because you'll want to."

The brakes wheezed and screeched as the bus pulled into the Princeton terminal. The heaters blew the smell of piss and wet fur and scorched metal over House's face, drying his eyes out until each blink scratched his eyelids over his corneas. That was all they preached. Don't worry. Be happy. Until you'd left. Then you were on your own. House took the steps one at a time and hesitated at the door, shrugging away the wet shiver of raindrops down his collar. After the heavy, stifling heat and stink of the bus, the evening air smelled grey and damp and fresh. They'd detoxed the Vicodin out of his system until his opioid receptors weren't fooled into thinking narcotics were pain. They'd leached his life out the same way. Any hint of his old habits would bring the same responses flaring back to life. Even if he never took a another pill for the rest of his life, it would only be because he hadn't lived long enough.

House got off the bus.

* * *

Home was where, when you went back, they couldn't kick you out. Home was where they knew you so well that you could slip right back into the life that was killing you.

Right now, home was a shrine to Wilson's dead girlfriend.

Lucas had admitted as much when House had him following Wilson. "It's really kinda sad, that many happy pictures around a guy that depressed," he said. "I don't think he's moved anything more than an inch. He does the laundry, though. Actually he's kind of neurotic about it. It'd only be really creepy if he still had the same sheets on the bed. I knew a guy once who'd beat off to the smell even when--"

House waved him quiet. Wilson hadn't let House in last fall, not before he'd tried to walk away and not when he admitted he was coming back. After they were good again, they drank House's beer and watched House's television. Avoiding Wilson's wives and girlfriends was routine. Avoiding Amber's ghost took on the same quality. There were fewer nagging phone calls, and fewer neck-rubbing excuses along the lines of "I can't, House, I'm busy," but Amber was there just the same, waiting for Wilson to come home and upset when he was late.

House sat at the back of the bus rumbling out of downtown. Wet wool and the choking chemical musk of too much body spray--public transportation never lacked for 'what's that smell?' material. He'd started the ride in a seat halfway back, and found himself checking over his shoulder. The toss of blonde hair, the curve of a delicate, mocking smile, the bluish glow of moonlight, the tinkle of a laugh--they weren't happening, they weren't there. But he looked anyway, jerking his head around to glare, until Armpit Cancer Waiting To Happen sitting behind him said, "Dude, what is your problem?" and spun the volume higher on his iPod so that House could hear the blaring drivel from his earbuds. At the next stop, hating himself with every irrational step, House limped to the back and sat where he could keep a wary eye on the rest of the passengers.

"You never have any visitors," Lydia said once, her eyes catching his before she returned her concentration to the piano. She was meandering her way through a Chopin étude, her left hand not quite keeping up with her right. She lingered over the soft notes, keeping the tempo slow.

"None you can see." Sitting backwards on the bench, House kept his eyes on Annie, her metronome swaying more precise than Lydia's playing. "You're not keeping time. Not very German."

"I like the feeling. It is a lullaby, it needs to be soothing. It is not a march." Lydia leaned to her right, as if it was part of her playing, so that her thigh pressed against his. Her shoulder rocked against his bicep as she played. "Is that why you are here? For hallucinating?"

"Delusions, too."

"Are those different things?" Lydia smiled at him, the fall of her hair softening the bright question in her eyes. House's heart beat rubato, systole stealing time from diastole. "Surely there is someone who could visit. I might start to think you are only waiting for me."

"The only benefit to not being catatonic. I can say no to visitors." The first time he'd called Wilson he'd been turned down flat. Wilson hadn't even listened to him before knuckling under to Nolan, as if House's shrink knew more about what House needed than Wilson did. There was a first time for everything. Visitor privileges came at Level 3. House pressed his lips together and shook his head at the messages Beasley passed on from Wilson. If it hurt Wilson when House told him as smarmily as he could that Wilson wouldn't be _helpful to the healing process_, then it served him right for abandoning him.

House turned around on the bench to face the keys and began improvising, glancing over at Lydia's hands when their fingers brushed. All the nurses would be watching. Beasley might as well be writing her reports to Nolan in a pink notebook with sparkly hearts doodled in the margins, considering the way an amused smile twitched on her lips every time she pretended not to watch them together. She thought he and Lydia were _cute_, even though she wasn't supposed to encourage relationships--among patients, among anybody. Just one more _are you sure you're ready?_ to draw out in sugary concern during group. But when Lydia came into the ward, Beasley nodded the orderly to bring out the key to the piano cover. It was a small way to break the rules, and it didn't mean anything, but it was all he had. Time with the music, and with Lydia's shoulder leaning against his. House pushed all their chaperones out of his mind and played. Every moment he spent with Lydia he fell further out of his own rhythm and into her slower cadence.

Lydia was the delusion. House's suitcase thumped down the bus steps behind him, and the accordion doors swept shut behind him. The rain had stopped, leaving the sidewalks damp and the gutters trickling. House walked under the awnings of the little yuppie shops--one entirely for _cheese_, for fuck's sake. Another one dedicated to spices, a third for cork-sniffers' wines. The kind of clothing stores that were called boutiques so that they could charge an arm and a leg for fake vintage. A block further, arrogant oaks and Starbucks wannabes spaced out self-important apartment buildings. All of the glass and steel was carefully set off by cultivated greenery. House had been here before, snooping, and he knew the loopholes. A quick pathetic stumble with his cane got him in the right door behind a harried business-suited woman carrying groceries.

The lobby wore an air of pointed complacency. Even empty, it felt like there were eyes judging him for not wearing his three-piece best. House glowered at the rows of anonymous mail boxes and the hotel-grade industrial carpeting. He'd bet no one living here knew their neighbours or cared to. House banged the up button next to the elevator with the tip of his cane, leaving a rubber scuff mark. At least there wasn't any brass or chrome or dust-dull plastic plants. Not even a security desk he had to sneak past. For all the air of importance and authority, the building wasn't quite good enough.

When the elevator arrived, House forced his shoulders straighter and clamped down on his breathing, forcing his pulse to stay steady. Grimacing at the bank of buttons, he punched the button for the fourth floor, resisting the childish impulse to swipe his hand over all of them and delay his arrival. He should be looking _forward_ to this. He was going to get his way. Any fight in Mayfield that wasn't orchestrated to get him out was pointless. Who cared how many cigarettes he won at face-poker? Or how many minutes of un-airconditioned yard torture he'd ducked out of by claiming a bad pain day? No one at Mayfield had changed because of him. He'd changed because of them, and that niggled at him, irked and itched and unsettled him, put him off his balance. He was out now and no one knew--not Wilson, not Cuddy. Nolan would call them tomorrow, and then he'd have his shadows back. But maybe there was one place where he wouldn't have to account for himself. Where he could just live his damn life without _concerned_ friends staging interventions every time he stubbed his toe or took an aspirin.

House bounced his cane on the elevator floor, pushing away the jangle of nerves and annoyance. When the elevator dinged and the doors rolled open, House glanced up and paused. This was the last place he _wanted_ to be. But he'd made a fucking choice. His first shrink-endorsed life decision in three months. He hated the idea, but he knew at least one other person who was going to hate it more.

He stalked down the hall and stopped in front of 4D. Hooking his cane over the crook of his elbow, House rapped his knuckles sharply on Foreman's front door.

* * *

Tonight was going to be perfect. Smiling jauntily at his reflection, Foreman settled the knot of his tie at his throat, then stroked his fingertips down his cheeks, checking the closeness of his shave. He'd finally gotten them reservations at _Ma Cabane_. Remy would show up any minute, wearing something stunning--that long red sheath dress, maybe, the one that showed off the slimness of her stomach and hips, and with the neckline that dipped low over her breasts. She was coming by his so that she could leave her stuff here, and they'd be coming back afterward. It made getting into work together easier, since his place was closer, even though Remy preferred her place, and most nights Foreman gave in. The drive in the morning wasn't important. Having her here, though, the slip of her dress to his bedroom floor--Foreman quirked an eyebrow at himself in the mirror, then pulled his pocketwatch out of his vest and checked the time. She'd been late before, but he'd made sure this time to stress just how fast their table would be given away if they didn't show up on the dot of seven. He picked up his cufflinks from the dish on his dresser and headed for the living room to make sure everything was in its place.

Her knock was loud and insistent, but that was Remy. Didn't matter how gorgeous she looked in the most amazing dresses, she could still come across like she wanted to stuff her hands in her pockets and stride like a farmer across a muddy field. Foreman smiled and called, "Don't need to knock." He opened the door, fiddling with the cufflinks. The left one was always a bitch to get on.

"Thanks for the invite, roomie," came a bright, gleeful voice.

Foreman's head jerked up like it had been yanked by puppet strings. _House_ was standing in his doorway, an eager shark's smirk on his face. He slammed the door open the rest of the way with his cane tip and stalked inside, staring around like he was disappointed by a sub-par hotel room and dragging a wheeled suitcase behind him. "Don't worry, I'll get my own key as soon as I can steal yours and get one cut," he said, stamping his cane against the floor, probably trying to make Foreman's downstairs neighbours register a few dozen noise complaints.

"House!" After that one word, incredulity stopped up Foreman's throat completely. House was supposed to be at some psychiatric facility near Mayfield. Treatment program. There was no fucking way he was standing in Foreman's living room with the word _roomie_ on his lips. "What the hell are you doing?"

House blinked at him, his expression dropping from a happy, expectant eagerness into a puppy-eyed pout. "I _thought_ you wouldn't mind--"

"No," Foreman said. He strode forward and shut the door. He didn't need his neighbours hearing this. He was two minutes from going out on a date and then coming home with Remy. He'd had a summer completely free of dealing with House's insults and his stupid goddamn stunts and it had been barely short of Paradise. House might have just dragged himself out of his own grave and back into Foreman's life, but he could turn around and go straight back. There was no way in _hell_ House was staying here. Foreman didn't care if House thought showing up at his door was the most hilarious practical joke he'd ever pulled--that had to be what this was--but he wasn't going to suck Foreman in and he wasn't going to get away with it. If he was out of Mayfield, fine, but he wasn't going to drag Foreman into his welcome-home mindfuck. "Get out."

"My shrink says I can't stay alone," House said.

Foreman stopped short and tilted his head. House had spoken matter-of-factly, but Foreman couldn't get a read on whatever emotion he was pretending to use to get at Foreman's sympathy. House's eyebrows were arched slightly, his gaze direct, and he was standing as straight as he could, not even leaning on his cane. When Foreman didn't answer for a second, House raised his chin and swallowed, as if he was struggling to keep up the eye contact. Foreman looked away first, shaking his head. It wasn't a surprise that House had a shrink, or that House's shrink didn't want him to stay alone, if House had been legitimately discharged from Mayfield. Which Foreman hadn't accepted, not without proof. The surprise would be if House _didn't_ have a shrink. But that didn't mean any mental health specialist worth their credentials would send House _here_. "This isn't funny, House--"

"Nope." House turned his head to examine the apartment again. His lips popped on the _p_, but he didn't make any other sign that he was going to follow up his denial with _Oh, unless you meant this entire freakshow. The look on your face...!_ "Can't be alone. Apparently suicide right after leaving the nut hatch really looks bad for the stats on their brochures."

Foreman spread his hands in front of him. If he could just physically push all of this aside--push House out the door and forget about him--then he would. But House had never taken easily to being ignored, even when he wasn't apparently serious about invading Foreman's home. "Why are you being 'not alone' _with me_?"

Breezily, with a half-shrug, House tossed off, "My only friend wouldn't track down a license plate for me--"

Christ. Foreman didn't even want to know. If Wilson hadn't let House into his place, when they were as close to real friends as House could allow a human relationship to get, then for Foreman to let him in was rank insanity. And _he_ wasn't the one who'd been committed to an asylum all summer. "_I_ wouldn't track down a license plate for you!"

"Yeah, but when you don't do it, I don't care." House took a few more steps inside, gripping the pull-handle of his suitcase. After a moment, he glanced back at Foreman, a quick, furtive look over his shoulder. Whether he meant it to show or was sucking at hiding it, seeing the uncertainty haunting House's eyes stopped Foreman's heart cold.

No. He didn't care. He didn't care if he was House's last resort, if House had burned every last bridge behind himself, if House somehow believed that Foreman was the only person in the world who could offer him some kind of shelter. The sanctity of his home was _not_ going to follow most of his career down the damn toilet. "House, go home."

"Don't have one." Quick, sharp, and defensively indifferent. House checked over his shoulder again. Bewildered, Foreman stared back. It was like House was trying to toss off half a dozen honest admissions without showing that they mattered. His light tone of voice and careless delivery seemed precisely calculated to make _Foreman_ feel responsible for House's damn problems.

Foreman folded his arms. At the first sign he was going to cave, House would be burrowed into his apartment so deep Foreman would have to fumigate in order to evict him. "Yes, you do."

"I have a stash," House said. For the first time, something showed in his voice besides offhand recklessness. The words scratched in his throat, and he didn't look at Foreman.

Foreman didn't want to fucking _deal_ with this. Not ever, but certainly not _tonight_. If House had come in mocking him, insulting his apartment or his neighbourhood, then Foreman would know where they stood. It would be a normal conversation, for House. Foreman checked his watch, wondering where Remy was. If she walked in on _this_... Uneasiness made him hesitate. "Go stay with Wilson," he said, but it was nearly a question.

"Can't. Too many stairs." House walked away from him, down the hall. Foreman chased after him, but he couldn't get in front of House to stop him, since House was blocking every inch of the hallway with either his suitcase or his cane and peering into each room he passed. Bathroom on the left, storage closet on the right, then the master bedroom on the left and Foreman's office on the right. House stopped outside the office. "Is that a sofabed?"

"No." Foreman reached past House and decisively yanked the office door closed in his face. It left them standing right in each other's space, but House didn't back up. "Why aren't you bothering Cameron and Chase with this?" After the gossip that burned through the hospital right before House disappeared into his treatment program, even Foreman's not going to ask _why not Cuddy?_ Foreman didn't know if House's balcony announcement that he'd slept with her was a power play, a game, a come-on, or part of the hallucinations that Wilson had finally admitted to when Cuddy closed down Diagnostics 'temporarily'. It didn't really matter. Cuddy had even less reason to let House into her life than Foreman did.

House exhaled through his nose. He hadn't backed down, so Foreman couldn't either, no matter how uncomfortable it was to stare at House in the dim light of the hallway. House looked tired. His hair was buzzed short enough to show scalp through the grey. More grey than when he'd left. Foreman's arm was nearly around House's waist in order to keep him out of the office. He refused to let go, in case House pushed in and opened the foldaway bed, lay back like he was entitled to it.

"They're happy," House said.

"So am I," Foreman snapped. "Or I _was_."

"No, you're not." House looked over Foreman's shoulder, at the master bedroom. His tone was absent, as if he was stating something so obvious it didn't need any proof. "Whoever decorated this place had no soul." He sneered at Foreman. "Oh, _so_rry, was it you?"

Foreman stepped forward, using his body to shove House back down the hall. If he could just get him out the _door_... "You mean they'd _act_ happy. And Cameron would probably pity you." If House could tell the truth, then Foreman would use it the same way, like a blunt instrument.

House stumbled back a step, a flash of anger lighting his face. Foreman didn't give him a chance to snipe again. "You think Wilson might say no," he said, pushing again, so that House was forced away from the bedroom door. "He wanted to leave last year. Because of _you_. I doubt he wants you there now." Nothing on House's face contradicted him. His jaw was clenched, and he looked like he wanted to lash out at Foreman with his cane. Probably a good thing that there was no room in the hallway for him to swing it. "Well, I've walked away from you, too, House. I don't want you here. You knew I'd say no. So why the hell are you asking me?" Emphasis on _asking_. House's life philosophy might have been that no one could say no as long as they were _told_, but Foreman was going to act like this was a plea until House took the hint and got lost. Wilson _would_ let him in. House just needed to get over his own cowardice and show up at Wilson's door. Nothing had changed. Wilson was House's doormat. Foreman wasn't.

"Eric?"

Christ. Perfect timing. Foreman should have known it was House at his door the first time--Remy knew she could walk right in. That wasn't a message Foreman wanted House to receive. He called around House's shoulder, "Back here," and then turned back to glare at him. "I'm busy, House," he said. "You can--"

Remy came around the corner and paused, her mouth falling open. "House?"

House twisted his torso to look at her. "Oh, am I inter_rup_ting?" he asked. He pulled a simpering grimace. "If I'd known you two had a _hot date_\--"

"You're back," Remy said. She was staring at him like he'd gone off to die in the Crusades instead of upstate to a mental hospital. "Are you all right?"

Foreman rolled his eyes. Remy looked beautiful, just the way he'd pictured, her hair swept back and up, dangling earrings drawing attention to the length of her throat. She was wearing the heels he loved, and her dress showed off her legs--he could only imagine it was even better under her wrap. Foreman wasn't going to give up their time together tonight to play nursemaid to House. "He's fine," he said shortly. "He's going to stay with Wilson."

"Wilson's building doesn't have an elevator," House said, pouting pathetically.

Remy pulled the situation together in one astonished blink. "You want to stay with _Foreman_?"

"_No_," House said, his sarcasm calling her a moron. "I want to humiliate myself and put up with several dozen arbitrary rules about eating in the living room."

Remy nearly held back a laugh, but it came out in a snort of giggles. "He is pretty strict about that."

Foreman turned on her in exasperation, trying to signal her with widened eyes and a pointed stare. They'd been going out long enough. Couldn't she read when it _wasn't_ the time to put in her two cents? "Would you stop encouraging him?"

House swung around to face Foreman. "_She_ doesn't mind," he said. "I'd stay with her, but you know where that would lead, and there's that whole boss-employee thing--oh wait, I guess you know about that."

"Shut up, House." Foreman pushed past him and took Remy by the elbow, guiding her down the hall so that he could lean in and talk to her without House listening to every word. "I won't be able to leave him alone for a second," he said. Their evening would be ruined, the reservations he'd had to all but sell his soul for wasted.

Remy leaned in with him, her lips curving in a mischievous smile. She was humouring him, pretending like they might be overheard by spies, and it pissed him off. "It's not that big a deal," she said. "Tell Wilson tomorrow. He'll probably drag House off your hands."

"You're really suggesting that I let him stay here." Foreman stared at her. She shrugged, her eyes bright with suppressed laughter. "I can't believe you think it's that easy."

"What's so bad about it? He needs a place to stay. You have that couch." She leaned in again, conspiring with him, laughing at him. "It's one night."

Foreman shook his head. "He'll probably tear my apartment apart before midnight."

"Aww," Remy said, giving his cheek a patronizing pat. "Do you need me to be your porn buddy? I could take those magazines home with me--"

Foreman stiffened and stepped back from her, his hand jerking reflexively away from her arm. Jesus, how could she even fucking joke about that? If House found that stuff, he sure as hell wouldn't be mocking Foreman for being _boring_ anymore. House's disdainful estimation of him as someone who hadn't done anything interesting since he was seventeen was all that kept him safe from House's damn curiosity. Remy tried to school her features, but she was still laughing at him. "Fine," Foreman said. He glowered at House, who'd made no pretense about straining to listen to them, although he hadn't come any closer. "_One_ night."

House nodded in exaggerated agreement. Foreman believed him about as much as if he'd crossed his heart and hoped to die. Wouldn't _that_ solve his problem.

"Are you going to get the bed out for him?" Remy asked innocently.

Foreman wasn't going to get any peace until House had a damn bikini-clad handmaiden waving a palm frond over him, that was obvious. Remy looked like she was ready to audition for the role. He wrenched the office door open. The room was well-proportioned enough to have space for his desk, a bookshelf, and the couch with a stand lamp beside it, where he usually did his reading. Pulling out the foldaway bed, which he only kept for the emergency guests he never had, meant shoving the desk back, so that it would be impossible to get around it to sit at his computer. Foreman hipchecked the desk until he'd made room, and then yanked the cushions off the couch, pulling the bed out. It already had sheets and a blanket on it. More than House deserved.

"Spare blankets are in the closet, next door down," Remy said helpfully. "You might need to steal one of Foreman's pillows."

Foreman turned to her, trying to burn _stop helping_ into her with his stare.

She finally took the hint. "I'll...just leave you two alone," she said, arching her eyebrows and backing away. Still laughing. Just great. Everything was perfectly arranged as far as she was concerned. Foreman gave House one final glare before unplugging his mouse and keyboard from the computer and taking them with him. He had good password protection, but not so good that he trusted it when House could sit around all night making guesses. Carrying the peripherals with him, he followed Remy back out to the living room and let them fall on the couch. Remy went straight to the door, as if their date, the dinner he'd planned, didn't mean anything to her. Foreman pressed his lips together. "Why did you do that?" he demanded, frustrated as hell and not prepared to distinguish between her and House when it came to the smoking ashes of his evening plans.

"Don't you think he would have gone to Wilson if he could?" Remy asked. She shook her head at him, like _he_ was the one missing the obvious. "He knows you don't want him here."

Ass-backwards logic. "So why is he _here_?"

Remy shook her head. "I don't know," she said. She sighed, and leaned forward to kiss him. Foreman allowed the press of her lips, but didn't return it. "One night," she repeated.

"Don't you dare say 'what could possibly go wrong'," Foreman said.

"Trust me," she said, lightly sardonic. "I won't. But I think you'll survive until tomorrow somehow. Good night."

Foreman snorted in disgust, but he closed the door softly behind her, before leaning back against it and starting to undo his cufflinks.

* * *

House hadn't been lying when he said Foreman's apartment had no soul. The place was a tribute to modern art, where you only sat on the furniture because it was an ironic comment on the human need for comfort in an alienating world. At least the sofabed was no museum piece. House sat down on the end of it, bouncing slightly to test the springs. They didn't creak badly, and they had enough give. There wasn't a groove worn down the middle of the mattress that he'd be rolling into all night long. It was comfortable enough, but it wasn't perfect. Pretty much the opposite of the rest of the apartment.

House looked over his shoulder. Flicked the lamp's chain: on, off, on. His suitcase nudged his pantleg, and he pushed it aside with one foot. From what he could see, every book on Foreman's shelves was non-fiction, medical texts and biographies of famous dead minds. The computer was mildly interesting, if only because Foreman had drawn a line by taking the keyboard away. But Lucas hadn't found anything when he investigated Foreman. Nothing _to_ find. Boring.

He shifted back and lay down, hands behind his head, good leg crossed over bad. His runners dangled over the foot of the bed. The lamplight was soft and yellow, turning the window into a mirror against the night, keeping out the rain-shadow darkness.

"What the hell did you say to Wilson?" Twisting his weight around on his cane tip, House faced Nolan for as long as it took to ask the question, and then set off pacing again.

"I asked him to let me do my job," Nolan said. The more agitated House got, the more he retreated into stillness, like some subliminal guilt trip for House's overreaction. "Do you let your patients' families watch your differentials?"

"When they have something to contribute!" It wasn't a lie, but it was grand enough to pass for one. House thought of Cate, smiling wryly as she showed him every damn inch of herself and then asked self-deprecatingly to keep her thick woolen socks on. He'd nearly killed her by letting her _be involved_. It didn't make a difference that he couldn't have forced her into anything through the satellite link. He shouldn't have _cared_ enough to let her get away with it.

"Strange," Nolan said. "I would have thought you wouldn't like to hear what Wilson had to say. Isn't this about _you_?"

"Wilson matters," House muttered, stopping mid-stride and lifting a hand to scrub at his forehead.

"If you'd like me to involve him, I will," Nolan said. "But I won't ask him to do you favours when they'd act directly against your treatment here."

"What treatment?" He'd meant to snap the words out, belligerent, but he'd already lost his anger.

"You were trying to blackmail me, apparently." Nolan's jaw dropped slightly in his damn 'I'm laughing _with_ you' smile. He took way too much delight in House's tactics. The fact that he was serious underneath the humour kept House on edge, waiting for the scoffing, disgusted edge to surface again. Nolan could give up on him. Would. Nearly had.

House dropped back into his chair. He had all the blackmail material he needed, without finding out just how married Nolan's long lunch was. Nolan had taken him to a hospital where he didn't have privileges, while he didn't even have his fucking license, and asked for a treatment opinion. House could make trouble and Nolan knew it. But they'd sat together in the flatline-quiet hospital room before Nolan had asked him, rough-voiced, to get out. House had. Nolan had driven him back to Mayfield after time of death had been called. House had watched the starlight, and walked himself right back into his cell.

"Families lie," he said. "Wilson lies as much as he breathes. He makes it worse by telling the truth at the same time."

"You admit he's family," Nolan said. "You won't let your parents get close, but you work with people you won't let go of."

House frowned against lamp light. Foreman pretended so hard that he was all surfaces, it should have meant there was something worth digging for, but there wasn't. Kutner had been the opposite--everything showing. Until he proved it was just another lie. Still, Kutner's apartment had actually had a _person_ living there, even after he'd shot himself. House had felt the quiet there, the emptiness. He'd sat on Kutner's bed for a long time. He'd discarded every picture by then, and stared at the dark, smeared stain on the hardwood.

House could have slipped back there tonight, under the police tape. No. Who was he kidding? The place had probably been rented to another tenant who'd have ghost stories to tell--_I got a deal on the rent because the last guy offed himself in the bedroom_. Or maybe nobody would find out. Kutner's parents would have taken away anything that held a shred of his personality. Even if House found his way back in, it wouldn't be Kutner's anymore. No need to fight his way in.

"Do you need anything?"

House lifted his head. Foreman stood in the doorway, looking like a whipped dog, tail between his legs and resentful at being beaten. It would be so simple to make a sneering reference to his home training, seeing to the needs of a guest he'd probably toss out on his ass if he dared to cross Thirteen. Risk whatever blowjobs she'd promised him for putting up with House. House could get himself kicked out if he wanted. Mention Foreman's mother and his crappy hospitality in the same breath and he'd be homeless in seconds. House let his head fall back and stared at the ceiling. "No."

Foreman didn't leave. House refused to watch him, but he could feel him _hovering_. That was exactly what he'd hoped to a_void_ by coming here. He raised his head again. Since Thirteen had left, Foreman had taken off his tie and his suit jacket, and unbuttoned his dress shirt at his throat. The idea of seeing Foreman dressed in anything less than a perfectly pressed and dry-cleaned suit caught his attention for all of two seconds, and then House dismissed it. It didn't matter. Foreman probably had at least a dozen morning habits more annoying than Wilson's, too. "Unless you're going to feed me, you can go," he said. "I don't actually need a suicide watch."

Foreman snorted. "Food's in the kitchen." He turned his back on House and disappeared across the hall, into the master bedroom.

"That's it?" House called. He hadn't expected Foreman to offer to cook a seven-course meal for him, but he also hadn't expected blanket permission to make his own meals without some kind of _clean up after yourself or be dismembered_ ultimatum tacked on the end. Foreman must have heard him, but he didn't answer.

House slumped back. This was looking worse and worse. He'd dismissed Taub as a possibility in the same breath that he'd thought of him. Much as he could grin and bear it, and get through by paying outrageous insults to Taub's wife, Taub didn't let House get under his skin the way he'd like. He was more likely to cut House's honesty to shreds just to show how fucking witty he could be. And Foreman, damn him, was right about Chase and Cameron. They were _in love_, even though House didn't believe their act. If he showed up, they'd make the effort of showing how happy they were. They'd treat him as if their lives depended on playing the glowing newlyweds. The idea of Cameron's pity, of Chase's defensive posturing, left him cold.

Finally, he pushed himself to his feet again, and peered out of the door to see if Foreman was preparing an ambush in some other room. No sign. House headed for the kitchen and opened the fridge, taking his time to look over Foreman's groceries before pulling out a loaf of bread. The second cupboard he investigated had plates. The third had peanut butter. He rattled the cutlery drawer to find a knife. His sandwich was nearly slapped together when Foreman showed up. The look on his face was something like constipated terror, as if acting like House wasn't just catching, it couldn't be sterilized off a butter knife. House sneered down into the peanut butter. Couldn't stay away. No trust at all.

House lifted his sandwich in a salute. "Thanks," he said, lifting his gaze to challenge Foreman's. Wilson would take that word at face value. He'd probably light up like a pinball machine because House had said it. He'd think it _meant_ something.

Surprise crossed Foreman's face, replaced by searching suspicion a second later. House took a big, gummy bite and chewed as loudly as he could, working the peanut butter against his palate with his tongue. "Yeah," Foreman said. "Right." He left House ruminating in the kitchen and slammed back into his Fortress of Poutitude.

House dumped the crusts in the garbage after he'd finished most of the sandwich.

"Do you think the world will end if you don't think the worst of people?" Nolan asked.

House shook his head. "Do you get tired of repeating the same lies?" He wandered to the window, disgusted but not feeling vicious with it. Just tired. "How many times has Alvie been through this place?"

"Everyone is different. Alvie's not you."

"That's Beasley's line." Straight out of group: healing through mantras. SSRIs were bad enough, but at least they had more science behind them than _hope_ in helpfully sampler-sized truisms.

"What do you expect me to say?"

"That forty percent of your patients are here for their annual tune-up. That most of them who slice themselves open once eventually manage not to screw it up."

Nolan nodded. "I won't tell you everything's going to be different this time. Or that the people you care about are going to stay." He was watching like a hawk when House turned back to him, no matter how much he tried to hide it. "I'm sorry, House. That she left, and that you got hurt. But if you're going to pretend you believe the statistics, remember that sixty percent first."

Foreman didn't even pretend to like him. Barely pretended to put up with him. As long as House stayed here, he was safe from all the bullshit that said someone was going to care.

* * *

Heart thumping icy panic through his veins, House started awake, the lamp suddenly glaring in his eyes. Foreman was snatching _The Life of Langston Hughes_ off his chest. House got his arms under himself and pushed up, glaring to cover his scare. "What?"

"It's time to go." Foreman scowled at the book, rubbing a crease out of the page House had dog-eared.

House blinked and caught his breath. His heart rate was already slowing. Other than being yanked out of it too soon, the sleep he'd managed to get in Foreman's office had been...good. His first night in Mayfield he hadn't slept at all, and since then, he'd gotten used to waking up to Alvie rapping and babbling to himself in the darkness. He grabbed his watch from the arm of the couch and slapped it on his wrist. 8:29. Foreman was tamping Langston Hughes back among the other biographies--alphabetized by subject, what else. He looked like he did every damn day, suit, tie, and pomposity all in place. He hadn't woken House up. Not with lights, buzzers, or _shower time for everyone on AM schedules, and yes, that means you, Greg_. House had kept setting the book down on the hour and staring at the door, waiting for the nurse's footsteps and the flashlight splashing across his face. It hadn't come. He'd fallen asleep. "I didn't hear the shower," he muttered. He rolled over to sit up and resting his elbows on his knees.

"I'm going to work," Foreman said, folding his arms. Beasley had never been swayed by whines of _aww, five more minutes, Mom!_ Foreman looked likely to continue the tradition. House eyed him and kept hunched over, taking stock. Back didn't hurt. Leg nagged at him, but no worse than usual. Foreman's expression of martyred patience made House want to claim rusty nails digging into his marrow through his hip, though. "You need to talk with Wilson."

"No," House said. He swiped a hand down his face, rubbing the sleep gunk from his eyes and scratching his chin. He'd fallen asleep in his jeans and Alvie's t-shirt. Last night he'd draped his blazer over Foreman's computer to stop its self-satisfied power glow from getting in his eyes.

"You're not staying here." Foreman tossed the blazer to him. It hit his arms and landed across his knees. House shot him an irritated glance, wondering how much of this wake-up routine was payback. At least Wilson had earned his damn nagging rights. "I'll give you a ride. But you're not staying in--"

"Fine!" House swept the blazer off his lap and grabbed for his cane, shoving to his feet too fast and earning himself a bolt of pain up his spine. "Get out of the room for ten minutes and you might get a little more cooperation."

Foreman stared at him skeptically. Cooperation was about the last thing he expected. House rolled his eyes, but Foreman's doubt was the least of what he deserved. Finally, Foreman got out, the door clicking shut behind him. House opened his suitcase and dragged out some clothes, grinding his teeth the whole time he dressed. He was giving in. Doing what Foreman _wanted_.

Beasley was practically standing over him in his mind. They'd gotten rid of the hallucinations and replaced them with a conscience that sounded a hell of a lot like his ward doctor. "Come on, Greg, it's not that bad. No cooking, no cleaning, and all we ask in exchange is that you follow a schedule. Is that really so demeaning?"

"Yes," House said, making his best pace down to the kitchen, late for breakfast, as usual. After Alvie's face had fallen into the epitome of pitying despair the one time he'd seen House's leg, House refused to get dressed while he was still in the room.

"Well, I'm sorry," Beasley said brightly, not sorry at all. She gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. "The expectations aren't going to change. So shape up, or you don't eat."

Foreman was probably boring through the door with X-ray vision and judging every movement. House tipped out his meds into his palm and glared as if he could stop Foreman from counting each pill. He was still acclimatizing to the SSRIs. He was probably supposed to be grateful that he hadn't turned into a blimp. The last time Nolan had adjusted his meds, it'd been to add bupropion to his citalopram, as if the pain didn't keep House from getting it up more than the SSRIs ever had. He tapped out a 250 mg naproxen capsule to his handful of pills and gulped them down one by one, then found his cane and jerked the door open.

Foreman wasn't standing there saying, "Tongue," so he could check him for cheeking. Jesus, what kind of crazyhouse was he pretending to run, anyway? House headed down the hall, swinging his head from side to side until he found Foreman in the dining room, reading a journal and enjoying a cup of coffee. House crossed the room and swiped the mug from him, downing it in a few gulps even though it was too sweet and hot enough to burn his throat. "Great," he said. "Let's go."

Foreman glanced at him but didn't say a word. He got his briefcase and opened the door for House--not as pointedly as he could have--and paused behind him to lock up. House kept his eye on which key he used, and which pocket Foreman dropped his keyring into, and then he followed Foreman in sullen silence to his car.

* * *

"I'm sorry."

Foreman raised his eyebrows and shared a look with Cuddy. Ever since last night, House had been doing his best to fake Foreman out, and now he was doing the same to Cuddy. The faint lines around her eyes crinkled deeper, and Foreman couldn't tell if it was worry _for_ House or because of him.

"To both of you," House went on, turning his shoulders to give Foreman another one of his inscrutable looks. On anyone else, Foreman would call it honesty, but right now he didn't trust House to tell him the Earth revolved around the sun. He'd cracked and checked on House the second he heard his footsteps heading for the kitchen, certain that House would be going through every cupboard. The longer House kept up his contrite act, the more Foreman wanted to check and see if a _kick me_ sign had been taped to his back. Cuddy, and probably Wilson, might believe in the new and improved House. They both loved to get taken in, over and over again. Foreman didn't.

Cuddy opened her mouth, but held her breath for a second longer before asking, "What are you going to do?"

House shrugged, pulling on nonchalance like a mask. "I don't know. But it won't be here."

Foreman waited for the punchline. House would go to the last second before pulling the rug out from under him. That was what last night was about--screwing with his head, trying to show how much he'd changed, before he dragged Foreman with him into this meeting to show just how easily Cuddy would reinstate his license and hand the department back over to him. Instead, House settled one last obscure glance on him, and walked out, letting the door slip shut behind him.

Cuddy's lips were still parted. House had limped out too quickly for her to flatter his ego with how much the hospital needed him. Foreman had no idea what was between them, other than some masochistic combination of personal and political on Cuddy's part. House brought in the research dollars, there was no denying that. But this was his chance. If Foreman gave Cuddy a chance to catch her breath, then the window would close. He'd been working his ass off to make the world forget about his time at Mercy. When Cuddy closed Diagnostics while House was gone, without so much as a word of negotiations, he'd thought the opportunity had already passed him by. Like hell he was going to give it another chance to escape.

Cuddy straightened from her half-seat on the edge of her desk and circled it to sit down. "Have you talked to Wilson?" she asked.

"I told House to go see him," Foreman said. That was no guarantee that House would. It was more likely that he'd avoid Wilson just because Foreman had asked. "I'll catch up with him in a few minutes."

"House should be staying with him." Cuddy pulled her keyboard closer and glanced at her computer screen. Dismissing him.

Foreman chuckled, though amusement was about the last thing he was feeling. "No offense, I'm sure," he said, sitting back comfortably and folding his hands in his lap.

"You know you don't want him," Cuddy said, shooting him a cut-the-bullshit stare. She shook her head and focused on the screen, her chin in one hand as she clicked emails into the trash. "I'd like him to get better, and that means staying with someone who wants to check up on him."

"House doesn't seem to think so," Foreman said. Christ, he wasn't exactly worthless.

Cuddy smiled at him. Foreman held back a tight sigh. She'd pricked him into playing the devil's advocate. He still wasn't moving. If she didn't think he was good enough to keep up with House in his own apartment, then she certainly wasn't going to give him his own department. She might not acknowledge it, though, but they both wanted the same thing. House living with Wilson and Foreman free to do what he was good at. "Now that he's gone," he said, "you need someone running Diagnostics."

"No, I need good doctors in Neurology," Cuddy said. "When House comes back--"

"He just _came_ back," Foreman said. "And he quit." He paused, to let that sink in, before he made his pitch. "You brag about the Diagnostics department at every fundraiser. I want to give you the chance to keep doing that."

"You're no House." Cuddy spoke absently, as if it was nearly too self-evident to say.

Foreman raised his eyebrows, refusing to be ruffled. "No, I'm not. So you won't be bleeding attorney's fees and malpractice insurance for every patient I take." No without a reason wasn't going to get rid of him. She'd given him control of the department before and he'd done a damn good job. He'd been completely on top of the paperwork for the last year, since he'd come back from New York. All House could offer was the occasional epiphany. Foreman could deliver a department that _worked_.

Cuddy sighed and looked up, piercing him with a tired, jaded stare. Foreman braced himself, trying not to let go of his casual confidence. He didn't care what kind of impossible assignment she stuck him with. Ninety percent success rate, complete cessation of lawsuits, whatever it was, he could make it happen--or at least, get close enough that she'd realize what an asset he was.

She let the silence hang between them, her eyes narrowing slightly. Christ, she was _toying_ with him. "I want to know that House has somewhere to be," she said. "If he hasn't asked to stay with Wilson yet, then he won't."

No. Oh, _hell_ no. "Uh, being head of Diagnostics is about the patients," Foreman said, trying to chuckle past the idea without squirming under Cuddy's silent _Put up or shut up_. As if her coddling of House had always been entirely professional and it was one more part of the job. "I'm not interested in being House's babysitter when he's not even part of this hospital."

"Right," Cuddy said, leaning back in her turn. She was so perfectly certain she knew his answer--and she was right, God damn it. This wasn't what he was signing up for. This wasn't even about his career, this was about indulging a fifty-year-old drug addict who'd sooner believe in unicorns and leprechauns than admit that a person could change. "The medicine comes first. But the medicine doesn't come at all if you don't agree to what House wants from you."

Gritting his teeth to keep his anger in check, Foreman tightened his hands into fists on his lap, out of her sight. "It's a disaster waiting to happen! You _know_ that. He's a drug addict--"

She tilted her head to the side and raised her eyebrows, eyes clear and blue and straightforward, closing the trap. "Give him a chance, and I'll give you a chance."

"You're turning a hiring decision into a game," Foreman snapped, muscles tensing. "House did that last year and you couldn't crack down on him fast enough." As if her hypocrisy was the issue. But it was the only weapon he had.

"Oh, please," Cuddy said, her patience thinning to sarcasm. "I can barely convince the hospital to keep Diagnostics open _with_ House in charge. Without him--"

Foreman pushed forward, losing his casual stance completely. He _had_ moved on from Princeton-Plainsboro, even if she didn't want to admit it. "Dr. Schaeffer was willing to open a diagnostics unit at Mercy--"

"So go to New York and convince her to give you your department back," Cuddy said, cocking her head and staring him down. "Face it, Foreman, I'm your only chance if this is the work you want to do. And don't tell me you don't, in some corner of yourself, owe House a chance. Would you even be asking for your own _unique_ department, at your age, if he hadn't taught you for four years?"

Frustration locked his muscles in place, a tight leash on the words _this isn't fucking fair_ resounding in his mind. Flatly, pissed the hell off, he said, "You're blackmailing me."

Cuddy shook her head, the hint of sympathy in her expression burning him as if it was pity. "I'm not asking you to bail him out of jail. Just to give him a place to sleep. It could be over in a couple of weeks, and if he's really not coming back, then that's not much of a price to pay for your position. As long as you prove you can hack it."

Foreman clenched his jaw, no longer caring what Cuddy saw. This wasn't a game of poker, and if anything, he'd already lost. Cuddy wouldn't let go of her ultimatum, and Foreman knew she was right. Mercy wasn't far enough behind him to keep him from being blackballed. The only place where he could prove himself was right here, working his ass off until he wasn't in House's shadow any longer. And House hadn't caused any chaos yet. Not even a mess--hell, he'd cleaned up after his dinner last night. Nothing worse than a dog-eared page in a book he'd clearly been _reading_ before falling asleep. But it was only a matter of time until House decided to go looking for a fix. Or another angle to exploit, trying to make Foreman despise himself. And until then, what? He ignored his life until it fell apart? He could never go over to Remy's, or, worse, bring her to his place. House would press a water glass against the wall and get his ya-yas out listening in. Fuck. Foreman wasn't going to let that happen.

But the department would be his. He could take on the cases he wanted, practice medicine _his_ way. Five _years_ he'd been working towards it, and if it became permanent he'd be the youngest department head Princeton-Plainsboro had ever had, edging out even Wilson, and in a more prestigious field.

If he didn't fuck up. If he was good enough.

That was all he'd ever needed to prove. This was just one more hoop. He'd put up with House until he got tired of playing his damn jokes, and he'd come out ahead. "Fine," he bit out, and tried to ignore the satisfaction in Cuddy's smile when he turned his back on her.

* * *

"Foreman. Foreman!"

Foreman paused in the doorway of House's office. _His_ office. He'd make sure of that. With the door pushed half-open, he glanced over his shoulder and waited as Wilson caught up with him. "Dr. Wilson," he said. After escaping Cuddy with his balls in a vise, he wasn't particularly interested in hearing anything from Wilson that wasn't _it was all a big mistake; I've asked House to stay with me_.

Hurt surprise warred with worry on Wilson's face. He darted a glance up the corridor to make sure they were alone. Useless precaution. Remy had been farmed out to emergency care, and Taub had been working as a reconstructive surgeon all summer. "Dr. Nolan called me this morning," Wilson said, getting in Foreman's space and aiming all that concern straight at him. Foreman backed up a step. This situation wasn't _his_ fault. "House was discharged from in-patient treatment yesterday. And he's staying with _you_?"

Wilson had been looking underslept for the past two months, a faint desperation edging the quiet, mild humour of his professional demeanour. His department had been tiptoeing around him, giving each other knowing nods if he was a bit more absent than usual, and excusing his occasional bursts of temper. Not that Wilson let much of a temper show. He'd barely work himself up to shout when he'd consciously drag himself back under control, deflating, and carefully problem-solving whatever disaster had just landed on his lap. "He looks like a guy who de-stresses by either volunteering to heal puppies or by shooting an AK-47 at a firing range," Sandy had told Foreman once, "and my job is to make sure we never find out which."

Foreman had his share of sympathy for the man. Amber had died less than two years ago, and House had been falling apart nearly as long. But it didn't surprise him for a second that House hadn't had the common courtesy to even tell Wilson he'd been discharged. For Wilson to still be shocked when House treated him like a dog he only kicked when it bothered to get in the way of his feet was just...one more thing Foreman didn't understand about them. He sighed, taking pity on Wilson, and waved him into the office. "Nolan is House's shrink?" he asked.

Wilson ignored the question. He walked to the balcony window, hands on his hips and tipping his head back as if to ease the immovable knot he carried in his shoulders. "He showed up at your place?" he asked without turning around. "Last night?"

"Yeah," Foreman said. He let the door fall shut and glanced into the conference room. The sooner he could page Remy and Taub, the sooner they could find a case Cuddy would sign off on for a trial basis, the carrot to House's far-too-literal stick. The furniture, from the coffee counter to the whiteboard, was draped in dropcloths. House's office had always been glass and aluminium, but now more than ever it felt drained of colour, with the books and toys gone or hidden. When Wilson finally turned around, he looked the same way, like being cut off from House all summer had shrunk him down to a lab coat and suit with no animation.

Tightening his lips, Foreman stayed near the door, giving Wilson room to pace. "He's fine. I told him to come and see you this morning. He's quit--"

"He _quit_?" As quickly as he asked, Wilson held up one hand to stop Foreman from answering, the other lifting to his face to rub at his forehead. "Wait. Why is he staying with you? I told him he could stay with me."

"I asked him the same thing." Foreman's eyes went to House's desk chair, the only thing not covered in a sheet. Wilson probably wouldn't take kindly to him sitting in it, but that only left the visitor chair and House's lounger. Neither would exactly convey the message that this was his space now, and he had work to do. He'd love to spend his day helping Wilson work through his issues, but as far as he knew, 'working things out with House' was about as likely as cashing in on the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

Wilson stared at him. "And?"

Foreman took a deep breath, shrugging. How the hell was he supposed to explain it? Even if House had been telling him the truth, that didn't mean he'd advertised his real reasons. No matter how offhandedly honest House had tried to seem, he was too cagey to tell Foreman anything that mattered. Blunt and honest seemed the best way to get Wilson out of here and talking to House instead of him. "He said your place had too many stairs."

"It's--" Wilson cut himself off. "It's not that many stairs," he said, more quietly, but he didn't sound like he'd convinced himself. His mouth crimped into a narrow line, and he looked like--well, like he'd just lost his best friend. He sighed heavily, his shoulders dropping. "He paged Amber when he electrocuted himself," he said, mostly to himself, as if House had set him a puzzle that he had to solve in order to keep his title as Jackass's Best Friend.

Foreman had heard about that from Remy. By the time Foreman had slunk back to Princeton, the burn on House's hand had mostly healed, and the story was added to the canon of House's stunts. Foreman hadn't wanted to hear about it. He'd performed enough emergency resuscitations on House to last him a lifetime. The blood pumping out of House's jugular, the sharp metallic tang of gunpowder and the sticky copper heat flowing over his hands, came back to him in a rush. Kutner's blood had been worse. Cool, congealing by the time they'd found him. His body had been limp and still warm. His ribs had cracked under Foreman's chest compressions, but he hadn't let out a sound, and the side of his face, his temple--what was left of it--

The last thing Foreman needed was for Wilson to hang around _dwelling_ on House's death-defying pranks. "He said his shrink didn't want him to be alone," he said. House was the problem. Not Kutner. Not any ambulance Foreman might to call because House had decided the best place to overdose was Foreman's bathroom. "He said it's not a suicide watch. He needs a place to stay. I've agreed to give him a chance." He let out a mild scoffing sound. Nothing worked on House like reverse psychology. "If I tell him that, he'll probably leave."

Wilson grew still for a moment. Foreman squared his shoulders and met his astonished stare, even though Wilson acting like they'd never met before made him want to get away from the damn scrutiny. "He thinks he's safe with you," Wilson said, apparently astonishing himself with his own pronouncement. "He trusts you."

Foreman had been all but holding his breath, waiting for some dire insight, but that was just ridiculous. _He trusts you._ Where had he heard that before? _He respects you_, right when Wilson had been desperately trying to convince him not to leave Princeton. He'd been begging on House's behalf then, and it looked like nothing had changed. "Look, House trusting my medical opinion is a good thing," Foreman said. "Giving him free rein to share his feelings with me? Isn't." No matter what they'd done to House in Mayfield, Foreman wasn't interested in any _bonding_ session. He started yanking the dropcloths off the furniture, just for something to do, throwing them into the seat of House's lounger. "Can't you to talk to him?" he asked. "Ask him to stay with you."

"I--I can't get a new apartment." Wilson tugged the sheet on the desk, more like it was the polite thing to do than because he wanted to help. "If he's willing to stay with you, you've got to keep him. He needs somewhere to stay."

Foreman took the sheet from him, knocking House's tennis ball off the dish on his desk. "Nobody's asking you to move," he said, bending quickly to pick up the ball. He shook his head and deposited in in Wilson's hand. "He's already got a friend. I'm not interested in taking over."

Wilson turned the ball over in his hands, following the seams with his fingertips. If he was thinking about how stubborn House was when he made up his mind, well, so was Foreman. It was a frightening thought. Wilson was really his only chance to keep his life on track. When Wilson looked up, some of the colour had come back to his face, and he looked more exasperated than sucker-punched. "I'll see if I can talk to him. Where is he?"

"I don't know. I brought him here this morning." Foreman tossed the last dropcloth onto the chair. A stupid, terrifying thought struck him. He dropped his hand in his suit pocket. No jangle, no weight--the dread sank into his stomach. No keys. "He's gone back to my place," he said, utterly certain as soon as the words left his mouth. Christ, he'd let his guard down around House for one damn second, when they'd walked side-by-side into Cuddy's office. "He's stolen my car."

Wilson gave him a small smile that should have been sheepish but was too amused at Foreman's expense to make the mark. "He trusts you," he repeated, and with a light, underhand pitch, sent House's ball flying back to him.

* * *

After the pathetic suburban WASPishness of Foreman's apartment, his car was sex on wheels. House grinned as he lowered himself into the driver's seat. He lifted Foreman's keys and rattled them against his palm as if Foreman was right there to see the goad. As a passenger this morning, he'd shut his mouth and stared out the window. Now, slotting the key into the ignition and turning it, it was his chance to go out and play. The engine purred eagerly, and the seats had individual, targeted warmers that were doing positively kinky things to his leg. After a day of Princeton's finest municipal buses, the rich scent of leather and cologne made House breathe deep and accelerate smoothly.

Lydia had watched him as he circled the roads around the Mayfield grounds. Strands of her hair whipped in the wind, curtaining her smile. She was strawberry blonde, not dark, but in that moment, through the flutter of hair across her cheeks, House could have imagined she was Stacy. Even when he'd tried to scare her, Stacy trusted the way he drove, in rental cars on their vacations, or on his motorcycle when he gripped her thigh and clamped it against his before opening the throttle and taking off. She pressed her helmet into his shoulder, her breasts against his back, her palms firm against his stomach, gripping tighter as she leaned into every curve with him. After a long ride, when they were nearly home, Stacy's hand would creep down to his thigh, thumb massaging his inseam, turning him the hell on through his jeans, half-warming and half-distracting.

Lydia's laughter caught House by surprise and left him smiling. She'd barely touched him yet. Only a kiss. _It felt good. Does there need to be a better reason?_ And yet he'd stayed up nights, the doubled throb of his thigh and his erection warm and untouched in his pyjama pants, with all the rhymes Alvie couldn't complete beating time in his skull. He felt like a fucking teenager, imagining her. More than a second pair of hands on the piano keys.

She'd sneak past the ward orderly. Grin a conspiracy at him him from the doorway, finding Alvie dead asleep, half-snoring but close enough to waking that both their hearts beat adrenaline-light. Her smile was moon-mischievous as she slid under his covers with him. Her skin brushed his, softly, and her fingers curved boldly around his erection under his shorts, as she whispered, "I think this will feel good, too."

He refused to miss Stacy from Mayfield. He forced himself to think through what Lydia meant, and what she wanted, instead. It was fucking pointless. He couldn't do anything about it, not unless he wanted to limp to the door, buzz the duty orderly for a bathroom trip, and jerk off sharp and shivering in a stall under the glaring fluorescent lights. He'd heard Alvie jerking off, quick sharp shudders and Alvie mumbling to himself even then. Yeah, he waited until he thought House was asleep, but even nights when House didn't wake up, there was still the smell in the room in the morning and Alvie cheerfully stripping his sheets. Blue balls were far better than _that_ humiliation. And a few weeks later, doped on SSRIs, he'd lie in the dark thinking about how desire _should_ feel, unable to even muster the interest to try.

The rain last night had washed the dust out of the air. The sun was out, September-warm and golden. House didn't have his license with him, but he'd bet Foreman's registration was up-to-date and tucked into the glove compartment like it should be. He came to a stop at a red light and fiddled with the dash buttons, opening Foreman's sun roof and then changing all of his radio presets. When the light changed, he jumped ahead of what little traffic there was. Cops would be using photo-radar if they were out at all. Foreman could fume in six weeks, when any tickets turned up in his mail.

The asphalt spread out in front of him, endless. Lydia had given him her car, with all the insouciant grace of someone who _did what felt good_. House wanted to call her an idiot for trusting him, but he'd been riding high on his own plans, his daring escape. Freedom Master hadn't been the only one who deluded himself into believing he could fly.

House gripped the steering wheel until he felt the stretch of skin over his knuckles. The only thing tying him to Foreman's apartment was the number he'd given Nolan. One link in a weak chain.

The last time he'd tried to run away, he was ten. Over something...felt like the end of the goddamn world. A bike, one he'd begged for. Said it could be his birthday present and Christmas both. He didn't care how many times his mom explained it would be too big to take with them when they moved and too expensive to buy a new one at each new posting. _If you don't_\--he remembered his own shrill, defiant voice--_I'll just go! I'll just leave!_ His dad had laughed and said, "Where do you think you're going to go?" He'd tapped House on the forehead, right between his eyebrows, as if he could erase House's stubborn glower by making him flinch. "You're so smart, right? Go ahead. Take the tent. See how far you get."

He'd gotten as far as the park down the block. The tent had collapsed on top of him, snapping and billowing in the wind, the nylon soaked through in a sudden icy rain. A cop car swinging by on patrol had caught him in its headlights. The officer stepped out, bundled against the wet. He chuckled at House's shivers and reached out a broad hand to muss his dripping hair. "Greg House? Your dad said we might find you here. Come on, son, you can camp in your backyard. It'll be just as exciting. Can't have you in the public park, you know."

He'd been fucking kidding himself. House checked the rearview and took the next U-turn. The tag for Foreman's underground garage hung from the mirror. House found his parking spot and switched off. Through the open sunroof, the garage smelled heavy, hot with exhaust and thrumming with the building's boiler ducts. House glared at the grey cement wall for a moment. Running away didn't work. _Facing_ them sure as hell didn't make them disappear. Nolan had written his letter, but House was still caged. Pissed off, anger tightening in his shoulders, House started digging through the contents of Foreman's car. Foreman was the easiest mark in the world, but it still helped to grab what ammunition he could.

There was nothing in Foreman's backseat, and only a regulation emergency kit in the trunk. House hit pay dirt in the glove compartment. Under the registration and insurance he'd expected, there was a box of condoms. _Cherry_ flavour. A snort of laughter caught in his chest. Had Foreman chosen them? Or did Thirteen get a say? He smirked, and pilfered a few, wondering if Foreman counted them out as exactly as his oil changes every three thousand miles. He'd be pissed off when things were getting hot and heavy only to find he'd somehow run out.

House hadn't stopped smirking by the time he got in the elevator, his mood light enough that he gave a pained but polite smile-and-nod to the woman who got on with him. If there were cherry-flavoured condoms in Foreman's car, there had to be _some_thing interesting in his apartment. House crinkled the handful of foil packets in his coat pocket. Lucas might not find condoms worth reporting, but obviously he didn't know just how little it took to rattle Foreman's cage. With the sheer unrelenting boring of living with Foreman to look forward to, House had had some vague idea of saving the best rooms for last, pacing himself over the course of a week and finding at least one bit of incriminating interest in each room he searched. He was a man of leisure now, so it didn't hurt to be thorough. If he got through it all today, he could still spend some time coming up with the top ten most public places to mention Foreman's penis peccadilloes.

His first stop was Foreman's television, which did satellite radio. Once he'd set the atmosphere with some Hendrix, House clapped his hands together and stared around the living room. His leg was nagging at him, the ache pulsing up into his attention, but he shut it down. There'd be something. He'd _find_ something. And then he'd push Foreman with it until he found out just how far the edges of his tolerance went.

Foreman's books were actually decent, which House had figured out the night before. Plenty of medical journals. The cable box looked promising--Foreman got everything from Nepalese weather through science fiction B movies through the Pride channel--but the TiVo was full of boring crap. Football games between teams House didn't care about and documentaries about human rights failures. Total buzzkill. House erased them and replaced Foreman's season passes with his own.

He'd been working long enough to know which corners Foreman's cleaning lady regularly skipped when the intercom buzzed. Holding his thigh with his right hand, House gave a considering glance at the piles of books taken off the shelves, and the one or two family pictures that might actually have some meaning to Foreman. Nothing. Jesus.

Grabbing his cane, House levered himself to his feet and headed for the intercom, pressing the talk button. "Yeah?"

"House?"

Wilson. House wrinkled his nose and propped his shoulder against the wall. "Je vous pardonne, vous avez engager le mauvais numéro." His hand dipped into his blazer pocket, but there was no pill bottle to fiddle with.

"I speak French, House."

House let go of the talk button. Foreman had ratted him out. Or Cuddy had. Wilson could hang around outside the lobby until he could tailgate his way inside with a charming smile, and then he'd camp outside Foreman's door until House relented. With a grimace, House buzzed him in and unlocked the front door, then headed to Foreman's bedroom, the only room left on his search.

He let out a soft, satisfied _huh_ as soon as he stepped in. The mother lode. For the first time there was a hint that a human being rather lived in the damn apartment. A few clothes were draped over chairs or even--Foreman's mom would be so disappointed--crumpled on the floor. The table under the window was scattered with piles of papers as well as journals. An athletic sock peeked halfway out from under the bed.

There was a knock at Foreman's front door, but like House had figured, Wilson tried the doorknob before giving up. "House?" he called, and started down the hall way.

"Do you think that sock is a sign that the boogeyman lives under Foreman's bed?" House asked, as soon as Wilson poked his head in the door and diffidently surveyed Foreman's inner sanctum.

"I'm guessing that the living room _wasn't_ strewn with books before you started this little project?" Wilson asked in return, coming to stand at House's shoulder and considering the sock with the same solemn seriousness House was devoting to it.

House swung his shoulders around to give Wilson an obnoxious look, tamping down his grin. Wilson would sense it anyway. He was pale and a little thinner, the way he got when he forgot that jogging was part of the perfect persona and let the workaholic side out instead. There were shadows under his eyes, and one or two glints of silver at his temples. He'd been worried--well, no shit, he was _Wilson_. If he hadn't been worried, it'd be because he'd dropped dead and only kept functioning because he couldn't be bothered to check for his own pulse. But he wasn't shoving it in House's face. A stupidly warm feeling got stuck somewhere around House's pericardium, and when he finally let his smile show, it was directed squarely at Foreman's single out-of-place sock. "I think it's the tip of the iceberg. Probably ninety percent of Foreman's id is under there."

"Scary thought," Wilson said, actually looking a little freaked out.

House smirked--couldn't seem to help himself. He hadn't played against Wilson all summer and it'd left him him out of practice. "Look and see if there's anything under there," he said.

Wilson lifted his chin and shook his head slightly, making no move to get down on his knees and check under the dust ruffle. "This is your little obsession, not mine," he said. "I don't feel the need to torment the person who's kindly agreed to put me up during my long and difficult recovery with proof that I've seen his dust bunnies."

"_Kindly_ has nothing to do with it," House said. Thirteen had blackmailed Foreman with sex. Cuddy had probably blackmailed him with the department head position the second House was out of earshot. If Wilson hadn't, too, it was only because he hadn't found Foreman to guilt trip him yet. And since he was here, he probably had. "I'm giving you the plum assignment," House wheedled. "That's gotta be where the porn is."

Wilson looked faintly sick to his stomach, and eyed the sock leading to the underworld with another notch of dread. "What makes you think he has porn?"

"He may be a robot, but he's also a guy," House said.

Wilson nodded, face clearing thoughtfully. "Point."

"So? What are you waiting for?" God, he'd missed this. Three fucking months with no one to push against except Nolan, who only waited him out and reminded him that it wasn't really his _therapist_ he was resisting, an insight House. Prodding Wilson was miles better, if only because of how much he sucked at pretending to be a shrink. "Worried he might have the same subscription as you?"

Wilson sighed. "Are you trying to get kicked out?"

Whining in his best Beasley imitation, House said, "Are you trying to deflect from the fact that I know where you keep _your_ porn?"

Wilson blushed and cleared his throat, but he didn't miss a step. He was a terrier when he figured he had House dead to rights. House's shoulders dropped. _That_ was one thing he hadn't missed. "You know Foreman doesn't want you," Wilson said, his voice growing pompous as he tried to string whatever clues he thought he had together. "Are you trying to _prove_ you have nowhere to go?"

"Do you think he's made a sex tape with Thirteen?" House said, throwing on an expression of offended horror. Wilson couldn't let go for five _minutes_ unless House shoved him off the damn subject. "I hear that's what all the middle-aged doctors get off to these days."

Wilson's face darkened instantly. House turned his back on him and took a tour around Foreman's bedroom, eyeing the framed pictures on the table. There was one of Foreman as a chubby kid with his brother like a beanpole beside him. That should be plenty of material to mock Foreman with, but House kept prowling, refusing to face Wilson's simmering stare. So he'd made a sex tape with Amber, something Kutner had stupidly marvelled over in House's hearing. House hadn't _watched_ it. He'd already seen too much of Amber's ghost. Lucas had pressed the flash drive into his hands, gleefully saying, "Oh my God, skip to 9:47, you won't regret it," but inviting Amber in to his fantasy life, after she'd colonized his subconscious, made House twitch back, sharp as reflex. He'd thrown out the flash drive. He knew Wilson was attractive. Attraction wasn't what held them together, and it sure as hell wasn't what made them good. If Wilson blushed just to hear that House knew where he kept his porn, then the thought of actually waking up next to him, sweaty and unrepentant, turned him off. He wasn't ready to face Wilson's freak out. He definitely wasn't ready to face his own.

He fiddled through the papers on Foreman's desk, _I'm sorry_ stuck behind his teeth, his throat closed in a resentful knot. Nothing would change. Amber would still be dead. House would still owe Wilson more money than he'd ever kept track of. If he'd gone to Wilson's apartment last night, he might've seen that panicked look on Wilson's face as he tried to hide the calculations about how much it would fuck up his life to let House in.

Wilson was standing, defeated, a breath away from a sigh, next to Foreman's bed. That much House caught out of the corner of his eye. "Why are you here, House?" he asked. "Don't give me that crap about the stairs. If you wanted to stay with me, you'd climb Everest one-legged."

"Good thing you know what I would and wouldn't do," House said. "And what my pain's like, because figuring that out for myself has always been just a little beyond me--"

"You know what I mean. When I wanted to kick you _out_, you climbed the stairs just fine. You held Chase's bachelor party there!"

Did Wilson think House had forgotten the grieving, resentful way he'd shut the door in House's face the last time House had tried to apologize to him? House turned back to him, his anger starting to simmer. Maybe it hadn't been a real apology. Maybe House didn't know how to give them. But this time, Wilson slamming a door in his face would've made more sense than Wilson accommodating him ever could. House _didn't know_ if he'd say yes, and he was sick of not knowing. He wanted to take Wilson for granted, and this time he couldn't. "The Vicodin made a bit of a difference," he snapped.

Wilson raised his arms as if that was some academic point. "House, it's not the stairs!"

"And you know that how?" House stepped closer to Wilson, his voice rising. Uncertainty and pity. He didn't want either. He didn't give two shits about being told _no_\--as long as he knew it was coming. "You don't want the simple explanation. You want me to feel guilty because it's Amber's apartment!"

Wilson's eyes widened, but House hadn't shocked him. His eyes burned, dark, like he'd managed to pin House with his own logic. "Is that it? Is it a problem with Amber?"

God, he could be so predictable. House's hand tightened on the handle of his cane. "It's a problem with you clinging to the past."

Wilson rolled his eyes, exasperation finally breaking through. "When I lived with you, you played pranks on me until I moved out. You're already bucking to get thrown out of Foreman's place. When he comes home and sees this mess--"

It wasn't like Wilson had learned the lesson House had been trying to teach him in the first place. How to let go and move on. House didn't care if Foreman learned a damn thing from having House in his space except how to leave him alone. "He'll get pissed off. And he'll clean up."

"I did the same thing!"

House took another step, letting his anger grow. All summer he'd been holding it in, no one to throw it at, no one who cared if he got pissed off, beyond writing their little fucking notes about what it all meant for his mental status. "No, you sawed my cane in half," he snapped, getting closer, pushing. Wilson would be throwing a bottle through Foreman's front window soon, and House wanted to _see_. Something real, something that mattered.

Wilson held his hands out in front of him, like he was reaching for the point, or stopping himself from strangling House. _Good_. "You _wanted_ me to! You were practically begging me to throw a bucket of water over your head when you walked through a door!"

"Yeah. And you did. Good for you, Wilson! You dumped me on my ass. Foreman will probably do the same thing." House had made his choice, but Wilson wouldn't accept it unless he knew every neuron that fired during the process. And he wondered why House hadn't wanted to stay with him. Well, House wasn't going to explain. Not when he could revel in his own anger, _feel_ it. "At least with Foreman I don't have to stare at pictures of him being happy with a dead girlfriend. Since _his_ dead girlfriend's still alive."

Wilson's pissed off expression shattered. The explosion House had been prodding for fizzled out right in front of him. Wilson rubbed at the back of his neck, and he stooped before taking another step into the room and sitting on the edge of Foreman's bed. "So it is Amber," he said. "That's your problem." He looked up, eyes tender with worry. "You could take down the pictures, House."

Bitterness choked in the back of his throat. He knew Wilson _cared_. He just refused to see why House didn't want it, didn't need it. "And move her stuff? And wash her dishes? And move in my piano?"

"Foreman isn't going to let you move in your piano here either."

"Oh, stop deflecting. This isn't about Foreman, this about you." House lifted his cane and pointed the tip at Wilson's chest, even though it was no good being pissed off alone. "You don't want to change. You want to cling to that place just the same as it's always been. You want to see Amber's ghost! Well, guess what. I don't."

Wilson blinked, his kicked-in-the-stomach expression shading even more despairing. His throat working, he said, "Have you--seen her? Since--"

"No." It was a pleasure to shut him down. "And that's supposed to be a good thing. I'm not your link to some non-existent afterworld."

Wilson nodded. He leaned an elbow on his knee and frowned down into his lap. Foreman's stupid sock was right by his foot, and House batted it out from under the bed. All the glee of seeing Wilson again--the idea of pranking Foreman with him--it hadn't disappeared, but it had been damped, the anticipation cut short. Pissing Wilson off wouldn't bring it back. Wilson looked up slowly. "But--if I moved."

Tired out, annoyed, House snapped, "If you moved, what?"

"You'd stay with me?"

"Is this some kind of abandonment complex? Am I going to find you peeing on Foreman's couch next? Because that really would be the last straw." House moved to the window and looked out at the picture-perfect street, the oak tree beyond the window.

Wilson's shrug rustled his overcoat. "House, you wouldn't let me visit. Now you're staying with one of your fellows. I just want to know what the hell you're doing."

"Foreman doesn't," House said. His faint reflection in the window pane looked worn down. Too damn tired to lie. Nolan had been chipping away at the habit for a month. He'd have to build it up again, the joke, the deflection.

"This isn't about Foreman, you said that yourself."

House snorted. "No. It's about you. You want to check up on me. You want to know if I'm taking my meds, but not taking too many meds." Maybe getting Wilson angry had helped, after all. Telling him the truth, in the relative quiet, and carefully studying the turning leaves, was easier when they were both dulled by pulling back from a fight. "You'd look for ways I was backsliding."

"I know you don't like to hear this, House," Wilson said, a helpless laugh underlying his voice, "but I care about you. That's a problem?"

House's shoulders tensed. He fucking hated needing Wilson. Wanting him around. Dragging him back into House's life because Wilson was just as screwed up and thought he liked having House around to make things interesting. "Right now it is."

"This is a mistake," Wilson insisted. "Foreman isn't going to help you."

House rolled his eyes and twisted his shoulders, trying to read if Wilson thought he'd actually _missed_ the most obvious fact on the planet. "I've had help for the last three months! I practically had a nanny holding my dick when I pissed." He glared at Wilson, pushing the message out as directly as he knew how. "I don't need help."

"You do. You--"

"You _think_ I do. You think you can give it to me." House threw his arms out, his cane dangling from his right wrist, most of his weight on his left leg. "Look, Ma! No narcotics! My SSRIs aren't hidden in my coffee. I'm taking fifteen hundred milligrams of naproxen a day, since kidneys are vital organs the way Pluto's a planet--"

Wilson nodded, his hands on his knees as if he was bracing himself against House telling him as much as he had. But of course he couldn't fucking resist a question. "How--how bad is the pain? What's the number?"

House grimaced. He hadn't been thinking about it. A three, a four. Distractions helped. There'd be nights when he'd be clawing his own skin off to get away from it. No breakthrough pain in the last couple of weeks, though, and he was pathetically grateful for it. Pathetically _flinching_ at the thought that it would come back. "They call it _chronic_ pain for a reason," he said.

With a sigh, Wilson dropped his gaze. "You know you can come to me."

"For what? Tea and sympathy?" House ducked his head, but he refused to regret saying it. Their lives were tangled together, whether he wanted them to be or not, and every dig he made only proved that they shouldn't be living together. "The last time I went to you, you put me in an institution."

Wilson's voice cracked in anger and disbelief. "Are you asking me to apologize for doing what you needed?"

"No." Wilson stared at him sharply, and House nodded, a quick jerk of his chin. He couldn't say _I'm sorry_ and he'd probably choke on _thank you_, but he could meet Wilson's eyes for as long as he could stand to and tell him he understood. "I know it was the right thing. It was. But so is this."

"This--what? This sleepover with Foreman?"

In the end, it was simple. Foreman hated his guts. That, House could be certain of. "I want him not to help. He won't."

Wilson sighed, but he dipped his head, about as close to an acknowledgement as he'd come. He sat still for a moment, then shifted like he'd just woken up, or like there'd be a distraction waiting for him if he looked for one. Absently, he reached out and opened the drawer of the end table beside Foreman's bed and glanced in.

"Any porn?" House asked him, only vaguely curious, but willing to be deflected.

"Just lube and condoms," Wilson said.

"What flavour?"

Wilson made a face, the one that said masturbation was a bathroom activity, where you locked the door and didn't admit it happened, and suffered the appropriate amount of guilt afterwards. "Is this something you really need to know about Foreman?"

House didn't say a thing, but let the _Duh_ ring loud and clear in his expression.

Wilson let out a defeated breath and picked the box out of the drawer, tossing it to him. "Sorry. Plain. Foreman continues his streak of resisting your curiosity."

"Ha! Thirteen likes cherry flavour," House said. He picked out a few of the ones he'd stolen from Foreman's glove box for Wilson to see. "These were in his car."

Wilson lifted his eyebrows. "Huh," he said, mildly intrigued.

"See?" House said. As long as Wilson wasn't digging around in his psyche, House was more than willing to let him in on all the good finds. "We still share everything."

Wilson only offered him a pained smile and pushed off Foreman's bed. "What are you going to do about work?" he asked, closing the porn drawer.

House twisted around to leave the room, the motion setting off a warning flare in his leg. "I'm not," he said. Nolan's idea, but he'd agreed. Put him back where the pharmacy was in reach every day, where he was constantly pushing his brain to make connections, and he'd wind up in a straightjacket again. "Change of scenery," he muttered, heading for the hall.

Wilson followed behind him. "You'll get bored."

They'd barely escaped the _last_ conversation, and Wilson wanted to drag them back under. His living arrangements, at least, House was sure of. The idea of a research position numbed his brain before he'd even started looking. Diseases were simple. People were puzzles. House waved the condoms over his shoulder, mugging for Wilson's benefit. "With this to wave in Foreman's face? I don't think so."

Wilson narrowed his eyes doubtfully as they stepped into the living room, around the stacks of books House had left. Every sign pointed to him starting in on a fresh lecture, about Cuddy giving him a second chance, about how his job at least gave him stability, or some crap like that. But instead, Wilson paused, frowned, and asked, "You really haven't found _any_ porn?"

House shrugged. "Guess Lucas was right. Maybe he lies back and thinks of Thirteen."

"Hmn." A thoughtful expression passed over Wilson's face. "Does Foreman recycle?"

House stopped and turned to him. He could _feel_ his smirk growing. "Paper? He shreds it," he said. Must be a rousing Saturday night for him. "It's under the kitchen sink." He'd seen the bin, but even he wasn't obsessive enough to play Erich Mielke with Foreman's credit card bills. At least, not until he was a lot more desperate than today.

"Check underneath the scraps," Wilson said, giving him a diffident co-conspirator's smile.

"You're a genius," House said, heading for the kitchen and the box of confetti. In case Wilson thought a summer in an institution had made him soft, he called over his shoulder, "Or else highly repressed," and he grinned when he heard Wilson chuckle behind him.

* * *

"Hey, stranger." Remy's teasing tone made Foreman grin before he'd even turned around. "Where do you think you're going?"

She sauntered up to him, dressed in street clothes--a fitted jacket, a hat holding her hair up, and her bag over one shoulder. Foreman raised his eyebrows and lifted his briefcase slightly. "It's after five. You gonna stop me?" He glanced around, but the foyer was nearly empty, with only two nurses engrossed in charting at the admit desk and a janitor's cart near the clinic doors. He held out his hand, his smile deepening when Remy linked her fingers with his. They slipped out the doors together, and Foreman glanced around the quiet entryway before pausing in front of her and pulling her into a kiss, his thumb brushing across her knuckles. She kissed him delicately, but with a hint of _later_ implied in the flick of her tongue along his bottom lip. Looked like she wanted to leave just as badly as he did. Foreman let out an approving sound and chased her mouth when she pulled back, hoping for something deeper.

Remy's smile warmed him through, even if the laughter twitching at the corners of her mouth was aimed at him. "You think someone's watching?"

"You never know." He started to laugh, remembering Chase burying his head in his hands after chugging down a beer and admitting that House had caught him and Cameron in a supply closet. "Oh, God," he said, his annoyance resurfacing as soon as he remembered the reason he'd been hurrying out the door in the first place. "I've got to get home."

"It's not like he's a puppy you have to let out to do his business," Remy said. Foreman tilted his head and gave her an exasperated stare. "All right, maybe he's a little like that," she said. "I'll go with you."

She shook her head, letting out an amused breath as she tugged him by the hand out into the parking lot. Pushing the thought of House destroying his place out of his head--it wasn't like he could do anything about it until he got there--Foreman glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, smiling appreciatively. She might be dressed more casually today, in pants and suspenders over a white shirt, but it didn't stop him from imagining how he would have gotten her out of whatever elaborate zippers had held last night's dress together. "I missed you last night," he said quietly, grinning straight ahead and letting her catch him at it.

"House wasn't enough to get me off your mind?" she asked. "I knew he'd lost his touch."

Foreman snorted, putting up his collar. It had looked beautiful out this afternoon, but the air was cooling down, and the breeze was sharp. "He ate a peanut butter sandwich and went to sleep," he said, his irritation not quite strong enough to burst out fully formed, but still flattening his voice. "I think he was lulling me into a false sense of security, so that he could _steal my keys_ this morning."

Remy's gaze flashed to his face, to see if he was kidding, and she let out one quick laugh, incredulous humour lighting her eyes. "He didn't!"

"This is House we're talking about," Foreman said, grinding his teeth. More than the inconvenience, more than House assuming that what he wanted would always be available to him, it was the fact that House _knew_ how pissed off Foreman would get, and that was why he did it. "Draw a line in the sand and he thinks it's an invitation to the Olympic long-jump."

"Okay, he would." Remy arched an eyebrow circumspectly, carefully not looking directly at him.

Foreman sighed. "If you're going to laugh--"

"I'm not!" Remy said, laughing. "Okay, I am. Eric, it's funny."

"Yeah, I'm sure you'd think so if it was your stuff he was going through."

"Been there, done that," Remy said dryly. "As I recall, you went with him."

"I'm not a _patient_." Or an accessory to a patient's life. Just a toy for House's amusement. They passed his empty parking space and Foreman clamped down harder on his fuming anger. If it weren't for a quick call from Wilson at lunch time, Foreman would have no idea if his car and his apartment keys were halfway to Canada, or donated to the cause of the next homeless person who hit House up for some change and got House's idea of a punchline instead. "He's been at my place all day. He's probably holding a rummage sale in my living room."

"So just to recap--you'd like your in_cre_dibly patient girlfriend to give you a ride?"

"Yes," Foreman said, defeated, but forcing himself to acknowledge the so-called humour for her sake. "Please. God, I hope Wilson talks him into leaving."

Remy tilted her head curiously, glancing at him sideways. "Don't you wonder why they're not setting up house together?"

That was the last thing on Foreman's personal list of curiosities, well below _Will I still have a stereo when I get home?_ and _What if Wilson convinces House he needs his job back?_ "I don't care, as long as they do soon," he said. House and Wilson living together worked fine, as far as he was concerned. House became more interested in ruffling Wilson's feathers, and Wilson was more dedicated to keeping him in line. It didn't really matter, since House wouldn't be in charge of Diagnostics, but keeping House occupied with ruining _Wilson's_ life could only be a good thing. It'd ease the transition.

He'd already let Taub and Thirteen know about the change. By the end of the week, they'd be able to get out of their obligations in their departments. Meanwhile, he'd be looking for cases. Satisfied, Foreman squeezed Remy's hand. House was an annoyance. A temporary one. Whatever happened, Foreman would handle it, and prove himself to Cuddy. Simple.

Thoughtfully, Remy squeezed his hand back, and smiled up at him. "I think it's sweet that House trusts you."

Foreman stared back at her, nonplussed. What was it with everyone assuming that House had some special affinity for _him_? It'd been a purely mercenary decision. House had considered his options and decided on the path of most resistance. That was House all over, and it had nothing to do with him trusting Foreman above and beyond anyone else. "I'd actually like to be distracted from House, not reminded of him," he said.

"Sorry," Remy said blithely as they reached her car. She took her keys out of her purse and unlocked the passenger door, opening it for him with a slight, mocking bow. "Your chariot awaits."

Foreman climbed in, adjusting the seat to get some leg room. Remy liked her compact, patting it on the hood and all but inventing a personality for it, but it didn't have much in the way of headroom. Foreman had to stuff his briefcase between his knees. If he was driving his own car... "I'm going to kill him," he said matter-of-factly as Remy pulled out.

Remy shook her head, a sigh slipping out. "God, this is all you can think about, isn't it? Eric, come on. He can't have done anything too horrible."

"He stole my car!" House would never face an annoyed cop charging him with grand theft auto, just because he looked like the type of person who _ought_ to be driving a late-model Lexus. House knew it, too. He'd point it out to Foreman, as if he didn't know, and then laugh in his face. None of which Foreman felt like explaining to Remy. "I don't want to think about what he might find while he has my keys."

Remy shook her head. "It's ten minutes to your place. Take a break for that long. Think about being being your own boss again."

A soft laugh eased his tension. "Yeah." God, he was. The department was _his_. If he kept his temper. And he would, with Remy reminding him of exactly what he was earning with his patience. Foreman smirked across the car at her. There'd been more than a few fantasies in his repertoire about keeping her late, after Taub had gone home. House's desk featured in some of them. "We'll get a case soon. Until then..."

Remy caught his look and stuck her tongue out at him. "Get your mind out of the gutter."

Foreman easily reached across the console. The one advantage to a tiny car; he could slide his hand between her legs without straining. "Oh, like yours wasn't." He rested his palm on her knee, then brushed his fingertips up her inner thigh. "Make the most of your time last night?"

"Yeah, me and my dildo. You were missed."

Foreman increased the pressure of his fingers against her leg. Legs spread, the tip of her vibrator teasing between her labia, kissing him urgently as she got close--he shifted as his inseam tightened. Remy tipped her head back, keeping her eyes on the road, but clenching her thighs together hard enough to get as much out of the tease as she could. Colour climbed her throat to her cheeks. Her lips parted slightly around an intake of breath. And there was nothing he could do about it once they set foot in his apartment. "God, I hate House." He backed off, letting Remy concentrate on the road.

"Yeah, _he's_ the real bastard." She squirmed, and wrinkled her nose, keeping an eye on the traffic and speeding up slightly. She took the turn into his garage with barely a shoulder check, and threw the car into park once she reached the guest spot he'd given her a placard for. Turning off the engine, she unclicked her seatbelt and leaned over. "What--you couldn't--" She kissed him, cutting off her own question. Foreman hummed satisfaction and sucked lightly on her top lip, settling back in his seat in order to give her all the room she wanted. The kiss was awkward, but tender, and after letting her go last night, the last thing Foreman wanted was to rush her. He met the playful thrust of her tongue and lifted up, seeking out the sensation. Remy pulled back, only enough to speak against his lips, "You didn't help yourself out?"

"With House in the next room?" Foreman opened his own seatbelt and slouched down, tugging at her lightly. The seat was already tilted back as far as it would go.

Remy grinned and climbed over the gear shift, all slow feline intent, until she bumped her head on the roof. "Shit."

"Very graceful." Foreman grinned and pulled her down. For a second, her knee dug into his thigh, a near-miss for landing her full weight on his balls, and he winced until she'd perched on the edges of the seat, straddling him. Her jacket gaped open, and Foreman pushed at it, blindly trying to get it down her arms without unbalancing her, kissing her at the same time. Remy dipped her head, one hand palming his cheek, the other propping herself against his shoulder. Light, teasing butterfly kisses, a tease of tongue and the breath of her laughter against his lips. "He could've been...enlightened..."

"Please don't talk to me about House." Foreman rubbed his hands down her back and tugged again, wanting to feel her body against his. Remy reared back long enough to shed the jacket, and then she finally kissed him fully. All the repressed desire from last night shot up to the front of his mind. Foreman tipped his head back, an encouraging sound rising in the back of his throat. Remy kissed him lightly, butterfly kisses along his lips, and then slowly sank down against him. She braced herself on her elbows against his seat, and sat down more firmly in his lap.

"Mm," she said. "Mr. Don't Fit In Boxes. You need to get in touch with your kinky side."

"I'm just fine with my level of kink," Foreman said. Remy had never had the monopoly on that in their relationship. She'd been surprised, and more than a little pleased, to find that out. Foreman wasn't finished surprising her, either; nothing made him more smug than to see her wide-eyed surprised and eager push for everything he could give her. He lifted his head to nip at her lips, hands tangling in her suspenders. "Do you wear these to keep guys out of your shirt?"

"Just you." Her tongue found the place behind his ear that made him give up on the struggle so that he could give her complete access. "No one else has a problem with them."

Foreman lifted his chin and trying to return the kiss to her throat, and getting a mouthful of hair instead. "How many people have you been letting attempt getting in?"

"Dozens," she said. "Shut up." Her body rocked against him as he massaged her ass, untucking her shirt and getting his hands down under the waistband of her pants. "Mmn, yeah. Come back to my place."

Foreman grunted, pained. Despite the warm rise of sensation, the clench low in his stomach, and the instinctive push back against Remy's undulations, he hadn't forgotten why he was stuffed into a compact car in the first place. "Can't. Goddamn House."

Remy pouted, and kissed him with the pout, giving him a playful, pleading look. "He's been alone there all day. What does it really matter if you don't come home?"

Foreman sighed and slumped back, his hands slackening inside her waistband. "You're trying to ruin this."

"Having sex in your car when we could be in a bed? Yes."

Foreman exhaled, a disgusted breath. He was turned on, frustrated, and stuck in a car with his legs going numb. "He's turned me into a fucking teenager."

"So ignore him." This time Remy's annoyance was real, and she sat back as much as she could, her impatient stare prodding him to take what he wanted or shut up.

"I can't--"

Remy lunged forward and kissed him, hard, pushing him back against the headrest and insisting until he'd opened his mouth, accepted her. Arousal throbbed through him, battering against his objections and sweeping them away. Christ, it'd been two weeks, their schedules in conflict, and she was _here_, _now_, in his arms. Foreman lifted his hips and yanked her closer. She rubbed against him through their pants, rough and insistent. Her hair had come loose, strands catching between their lips. Foreman brushed it back, his fingers clenching tight enough in her hair to pull her back. Remy gasped and fought back, biting his lip. The shock of pain went to his cock and Foreman gasped. She wanted to go hard. Take what she wanted from him. If he sent her away and House had disappeared after all, he'd be kicking himself all night. "Let's go up," he said, not able to give up kissing her between words. "Maybe Wilson dragged him out--"

Remy rolled her eyes and pulled back. "How likely is that?"

"I'm not doing this here," Foreman insisted. It was five-thirty, the perfect time to get caught by all his neighbours coming home from work. It was a wonder that they hadn't been already, two shadows struggling in the car's front seat, probably hard enough to rock the chassis.

Pissed off, but holding it in enough to use it against him, Remy slid her hands down his chest. "Fine," she said. "But only because _I_ don't have a sun roof."

Foreman stared at her, the image of her riding him, shirt pulled open and breasts swaying as she fucked him, all but crumbling his will power. It wasn't _fair_. House had always interfered with them at work, and now they were screwed because House had wormed his way into Foreman's personal life. If Wilson hadn't pulled whatever trick he used to convince House to change his mind once he'd made a decision, Foreman was going to put him right on the same shit list as House.

Remy opened the passenger door and crawled off his lap to get out. Foreman stood up after her and followed her across the garage. His tie was loose, and she'd wrinkled his dress shirt. Foreman had barely noticed when it was happened, would've wanted more if Remy hadn't offered it, but he still spent an annoyed second thinking about how it would look if they met anyone on their way up.

They got lucky. The elevator was empty when they got on, so he dismissed it from his mind. Remy had to use her key when they got to the apartment. She swung the door open quietly and tiptoed in, wide-eyed. Foreman rolled his eyes and followed behind her. Nothing was wrong after a first look, but that only increased his suspicions. Foreman switched on the lamp by the entryway. He set his briefcase down and closed the door. No sound, no light--there might be a boobytrap waiting for them in the kitchen, and he'd probably want to poke his bed with a stick and check for scorpions before sliding between the sheets, but for now, as far as he could see, there was _no House_.

Foreman pulled Remy into his arms and the first really _private_ kiss they'd managed in way too long. It wasn't one night House had ruined, but a week of planning around their new, hectic schedules. They worked in different departments, and instead of one case a week, they each had more like fifty.

With a soft breath, Foreman nosed closer, keeping the kiss gentle. A sense of proprietary enjoyment slid through him. This was what he'd really missed, even more than the frantic roughhouse down in Remy's car. It felt like she agreed, because she moaned lightly and palmed his ass. The sight of her happy, suggestive smile sent a shot of anticipation through him. He kissed her throat, and felt the cool tease of her fingers working his belt open. "Not yet," he murmured, even though his body was more than eager to find out where she was going. There was still the matter of finding out what House had done, if not where he'd disappeared to.

"He's not here," she said, nipping at his earlobe. "Come on, I promised you a ride--"

"I bet that's what they all say!" The lights burst on, bright and blinding, from the living room. House hadn't only flipped the switch, he'd aimed a naked light bulb at the door, catching them in its beam as if he wanted to break out the sodium pentothal and start the interrogation.

A surge of anger sent Foreman yanking back from Remy. He could feel his belt buckle swing against his stomach, opened--Christ, a second later Remy would have had her hand in his pants. "House, what the hell are you doing?"

"Nothing, comparatively," House said. Whatever mood of confession and sullenness he'd been in last night, obviously it was over. He looked maniacally pleased, his eyes clear and blue and his smirk taking a vicious, childish pleasure in catching them. "Don't let me interrupt," he said, leaning more heavily on his cane, as if he was settling in to watch. "If Thirteen's working out her death angst by fucking her way through the population, I am _so_ there."

"Too bad," Remy said. Her cheeks was flaming, but Foreman couldn't believe she wanted to stand around trading jokes with House. She met his eyes, her face calm and expectant, as if House hadn't interrupted anything more than a handshake. "You missed my foray into voyeurism. That was last week."

Foreman strode across the room to the lamp House had aimed at the door and pushed the neck down, taking the light out of their eyes. House smirked at him when he reached to do up his belt. Foreman had never been so close to landing a fist on his jaw. This was his _home_ and House had _given_ himself free reign here, like he didn't fucking know what the word no meant. He knew. He always knew, he just pulled this shit anyway because it gave him a laugh to see Foreman with his pants around his ankles. "Keys, House," he spat out.

"They're on the key hook," House said, pointing innocently, not that it covered the tinge of anger that underlay every word he said. "Right where they're supposed to be. Have you always needed that thing labelled, or only since the brain biopsy?"

Foreman's arms were shaking, his hands clenched into fists. He wanted to snatch the keys off their hook by the door and hide them somewhere, except that would only provoke House's insane need to play hide-and-seek with his employees' belongings. "Did you talk to Wilson?" he asked, glaring at House as if that would compel the truth out of him.

"He dropped by," House said. Last night the admission would've been moody, delivered with at least some stab at honesty. This time, if Foreman hadn't talked to Wilson this afternoon, it would have sounded like a lie so transparent that it had been delivered in order to _show_ House was lying. House's jabs came pointed and vindictive. He _wanted_ to piss Foreman off. That should have driven Foreman into a cold reserve, but he'd been caught by surprise, his control too frayed to manage it. "I told him I wanted to be Jack Lemmon this time, and he called off the Odd Couple revival."

Another night with House in his place. Foreman should have damn well walked away from Cuddy's bribe. She would have given him the department headship eventually, if he'd used his work in Neurology to solve cases using House's methods, and when she wasn't able to boast about her unique program to donors anymore.

"I should go," Remy said, taking one look at him and crossing her arms. "Foreman--"

He knew what she wanted. They could both still get out of here, go to her place. Five minutes ago, with her fingers tracing his fly, she could have convinced him. But House was mooning at them, casting them as his current favourite soap, taking a mean satisfaction in disrupting their night. There had to be something to explain the change in him since last night--since this morning, even. Foreman didn't care that he couldn't _see_ what House had done to his apartment. There was something, because House was blinking at him in his fucking innocent impression, which had never been convincing to start with, and tonight looked like a glass-fragile mask over something darker. "Yeah," he agreed, levelling his stare at House.

"Don't stop on my account," House said. "I'm sure I'll be able to block out the screams somehow."

Remy raised an eyebrow, looking nearly affronted. "What makes you think there's screaming?"

"Foreman strikes me as the type," House said.

"Look, just go," Foreman said, turning to Remy and squeezing her hand briefly. He could feel House's pointed, sneering interest, even after he'd turned his shoulder to him. "I'll--see you tomorrow." She had to understand that he couldn't leave House unsupervised. Their plans had been wrecked two days in a row, but if Foreman could push past it to get his dream job, she'd support him, eventually. When they got a case.

Remy sighed, the exhale pushing a strand of hair off her cheeks. She sure as hell didn't look like she was going to understand. Foreman watched her go and closed the door behind her, figuring that if she did use her dildo tonight, it wouldn't be him she was thinking of.

* * *

The paper recycling was in a bin under Foreman's kitchen sink, beside the one that held his rinsed-out tin cans. Mostly bills, shredded in the machine in Foreman's office. House brushed the paper scraps aside and saw the staple of a magazine binding peeking out. Trust Wilson to know the mentality of a guy with a secret porn stash. There were three of them, and he shuffled through them quickly. A couple of _Playboys_, that was all. Trust Foreman to hide the evidence of liking the tamest porn on the planet. House pulled them out, opening his mouth to spew out one of the dozen jokes crowding to be first, when he saw the last one. It wasn't some bimbo with a tease of fabric over her breasts. It was a guy--stripped down to boxer briefs, built like a lacrosse player, and grinning into the camera as his hand brushed his stomach, just over the bulge in his shorts. _Black Inches_ splashed across the top of the magazine in authoritative block type.

"Anything?" Wilson asked.

House practically shot out of his skin. He disgusted it as a leg cramp and let the last magazine fall back into the recycling as he pushed himself up. "You were right," he said, voice sharper than he'd meant. He shrugged, clenching his jaw for a moment, and slammed the cupboard door shut, holding up the two _Playboys_. He tossed one to Wilson. "For your trouble." He flipped through the other one, the pictures of nearly-naked women completely failing to register. He'd already seen this one, anyway; it was five months old. Fuck. He dumped it on the counter, something like frustration coiling in his stomach.

Wilson paged through his copy slowly, eyebrows raised a little past _interested_ to _intrigued_. Everybody half-clothed and nobody with a dick in their mouth--it was about his speed.

"Interesting articles," House prodded him. Wilson wouldn't look in the paper recycling. Thank fuck Foreman cared about appearances enough to cover up even his tastes in _porn_.

"Fascinating," Wilson agreed dryly. For all he'd been reluctant to look under Foreman's bed, he didn't seem to mind tucking the _Playboy_ into the inner pocket of his coat. And then he sighed, as if he was accusing House of abandoning him forever. "Is this really what you want?"

House stared at Wilson, his question so much white noise. Jesus, Foreman liked men. Men with sleepy eyes, hinting smiles, staring up from the magazine cover of _Black Inches_.

Wilson sighed and raised his hands. "Fine, I'm leaving," he said.

House hadn't meant to kick him out, but he was fucking glad Wilson was going. He snapped the lock shut behind Wilson, and threw the _Playboy_ he'd left behind right back into the recycling. Without thinking, he climbed down to one knee again and snatched Mr. _Black Inches_ right back out. His eyes snapped to the guy's palm, carefully poised over his cock. Which was the damn point of a cover like that. Of course. _Fuck_.

He'd gotten sick of playing pronouns with Nolan almost from the first. "Whatever you want to talk about," Nolan said, projecting all his cool comfort from behind his desk. "Whatever's important to you, House. Whether it matters to your treatment--we find that out later."

House paced another circuit around Nolan's office, picking up everything that was lying loose. His fingers twitched for the familiar heft of his tennis ball, or anything he could bounce off the walls. Nolan's head was a pretty damn tempting target, too. His desk was cluttered to match his Mister Rogers sweater stylings. Fountain pens. A letter opener with a ridiculous blade, nearly an inch long. "Do you have Susan in here with this thing lying on your desk?"

"With her, I put things away. With you, I leave them out," Nolan said, allowing himself to be distracted. Since he was distracted by telling House he anticipated him, it wasn't half as satisfying. "You were deciding on a topic."

"I have sex with men," House said, and bit down on the inside of his cheek, the pain blinding sharp, and then throbbing, his mouth flooding with the taste of copper. He was fed up with Nolan's alleged open-mindedness. The temptation to spill details always balanced like a TMI teeter-totter. Either he wanted to shut down and wall off every detail, or give in to the urge to see just how shock-proof Nolan really was. Covering quickly, he simpered, "Wouldn't that prove my mommy never loved me enough?"

"I don't think those two things are necessarily connected," Nolan said. His hint of jowls gave him the look of a bulldog, and nothing in his relentless patience changed that impression. "You've slept with men. Is that something you'd like to talk about?"

So he was more shock-proof than that admission could shatter, anyway. Resentful, House juggled the letter-opener one-handed, catching it by the handle after each flip. "No," he muttered. It was better than getting cornered into talking about what he wanted from his biological father, or what he'd never gotten from John House. House had kept a few names to himself, but Nolan refused to fall into the default female for his relationships. He'd always been good at lying on his feet, but it was easier to joke with the truth than to edit his history on the fly.

"Have you told Wilson?"

Nolan's questions meandered, jumping back in forth in time, but it always came back to that. House caught the letter opener and tossed it back on the desk blotter. "You don't want to ask if I've been fucking him in secret for twenty years?"

Nolan didn't answer, only watched him with the faintest disbelief hiding in the upturned corners of his mouth. "No, I haven't told Wilson," House snapped. With a jolt of irritation, he realized it would probably shock Nolan more if House admitted to being _honest_ about himself with someone important in his life, and he nearly fell into the same trap for the second time with _Stacy knew_. He twisted his lips and kept it in, slumping down into his regular chair.

"Would it be a problem?" Nolan asked. "If Wilson knew?"

"To know what? That he's friends with a fairy?"

"I assume you're bisexual." Nolan's eyebrow quirked, more of his amusement coming out to play now that House had dropped back down into his chair. "Or that you don't like to think about labels."

"Sex doesn't make anyone a different person. The lies they tell about it does." He'd made that clear to most of the people in his life. If no one picked up on that truth when House was standing there shouting it at the top of his lungs, it was their fault for only wanting to see what they wanted to.

"I'm sure Wilson would agree." Nolan let out a soft breath. "It wouldn't change how he feels."

"No, he wouldn't care." Wilson had some weird hang-ups, but they mostly had to do with _personal responsibility_ and _ethical behaviour_. He was finicky but he wasn't a bigot. The night they'd met, when he'd bailed Wilson out and they'd barhopped long enough that the bourbon had left a warm, mellow glow in his stomach, he'd thought about it. Interesting guy--might be fun. A passing, drunken thought, that the next day's hangover had sledgehammered from his mind even before he'd gone home to Stacy. Wilson had turned out to be too interesting to waste sex on, anyway. By the time Stacy had headed out of his life, House was far past wanting to play Jenga with their friendship. Knock the props out trying to build something bigger, and the whole thing would collapse. "He'd look at me differently," he said, gritting it out unwillingly. He had the stubbornness to meet Nolan's silence with his own, but just the _idea_ of Wilson's reaction irked him into speaking. "He'd expect something different."

"He's not that demonstrative," Nolan said. "Isn't that what you've told me? That he'd rather be...normal?" Shrinks liked to pretend there was no such thing as normal, but Nolan hadn't seen how hard Wilson worked at it.

"If he thought he could stuff me into the box he's marked _happy_, he'd join PFLAG and start parading," House said. He'd want House to _acknowledge_ the truth about himself, as if House hadn't been living with 'the truth about himself' since he was sixteen. "He'd sigh over groom-and-groom statues. Jewish mother syndrome."

Nolan nodded. "But that's not going to happen," he said, but cautiously, inviting House to disagree.

House snorted and sank deeper into the chair. Women were easier, and not just because fewer guys set off more than a mild buzz of attraction for him. As long as he dated women, wanted women, Wilson thought he understood. He had his lecture schedule tailor made, explaining Greg House to anyone who'd listen--rarely House himself, except to pick holes in his logic. The last thing he wanted was to throw Wilson off his calculations, set him stuttering and blushing and overanalyzing every word they'd ever said to each other.

It wasn't supposed to go like this. Finding Foreman's porn, fine. House had the tableau planned: sitting on the couch, casually paging through it when Foreman opened the door. _Oh, dear me! Home so soon? And I was engrossed in learning how Snowy Foxx's turn-ons include long walks on the beach!_ Foreman couldn't show a blush, but the muscle ticking in his jaw when he clenched his teeth was a better sign of his humiliation anyway.

He'd kick House out. Probably wouldn't be able to look at him. _Good_\--House glanced up at his own vicious satisfaction at the thought. He'd be proved right. Foreman couldn't hack it. If _Foreman_ couldn't stand him when House had barely wrecked his life, then how could Wilson, when House had-- Amber had _died_ because of him. Wilson liked to spew his pablum about moving on, and not leaving, but he didn't forgive House for that. No reason he should. No damn reason to apologize.

House opened the magazine, almost against his will, eyes tracing over the glossy paper. The _Playboy_ Wilson had stolen had hardly been pristine. The spines were cracked and the staples loose. Foreman had at least read them. But the pages of _Black Inches_ were creased and soft, and the whiff of printer's ink and old semen was unmistakeable. A few pages were crumpled, like Foreman had fisted the magazine in one hand while he'd been bringing himself off with the other--

Goddamn Lucas. House was going to demand a fucking refund. He didn't care if Foreman had bought the magazine after Lucas had swept through the place. No wonder Foreman had been on his back about what Lucas had found, or didn't find. He'd had a secret after all.

Foreman was supposed to be the same rule-following bore he was at work. House _knew_ him. When he'd be pissy, when he'd be irked, how much House could get away with. He was _here_ so he wouldn't have to think about what reaction he'd provoke next. Pushing those boundaries, a little farther every day, worming his way in until he was comfortable and Foreman had to turn around and realize he'd changed his life to accommodate House. Nolan wouldn't get anything out of Foreman that he didn't drag out. Foreman wasn't observant, didn't imagine anything, and he didn't care. That was how it was supposed to be.

House limped to the couch and threw himself down, as hard as his leg would allow. He wasn't backsliding. It was just making his own life easier. He fingered the crumpled corners of the magazine pages. Foreman would have a heart attack over a dog-eared book, but apparently it was more than okay for his porn. House opened up a spread near the middle. A black guy, head tilted back, mouth open, abs clenched and clearly outlined. One hand behind his head, propping him up. The other cupped the back of a white guy's head as he went down on him, his lips drawn tight around his cock, already glistening from getting sucked off. A second picture showed the white guy's mouth poised at the tip of his cock, a string of saliva and precome just connecting them, his fingers wrapped around his own dick.

House slapped the magazine face down on the couch beside him. It was fake. They were both gym-muscled and waxed to within an inch of pubescence. There had to be hydraulics surgically implanted to give them erections like that. Jesus, he'd bet Foreman didn't even like guys; this was some kind of fucking narcissism. Getting off on rippling muscles and big dicks. Not that House cared about the size of Foreman's dick.

House shifted on the couch. The usual low-grade three-to-four pain he'd been masking with naproxen all summer wavered and then rose, not sharp, but so pervasive that he couldn't get outside of it. For the past month, the one bit of pain relief no one had ever gotten on his case about--a long, heated jerkoff session--had been unthinkable. Literally unthinkable. Not because the room he'd shared with Alvie had about as much privacy as a panopticon. He just--didn't think about it. All the need he'd felt for Lydia, sticky and thick as the July nights, had dulled down to a dead heat in August.

_Wanting_ was clear in his mind, but it was all memory, no desire. He remembered Lydia's light breaths at his throat, and her palms cupping his cheeks as she kissed him. Warm, wet, and as soft as her whispers. _Ohh. Greg._ She arched against his hand, nodding as he slipped one finger inside her. _There_. He circled her clit with his thumb until she gasped into shivering stillness above him. She slid down onto him, and the swift embracing heat of her enveloped him. Precarious, balanced on the chair, they rocked together to the creak of its legs; slow, so slow. Pleasure overwhelmed him. Lydia's need and her orgasm brought him _close_, desperate. He couldn't. His penis softened inside her, and he squeezed his eyes shut, burying his face against her shoulder. She didn't say a word, only sighed acceptance against his temple. Humiliation tried to burn through him, but Lydia's fingers stroking through his hair and toying at his nape calmed it, and let it fade.

Maybe he couldn't get it up now, but he was starting to realize it was possible. He was going through Foreman's fucking _gay porn_, shallow-breathed. Jesus. It was just porn. He'd seen better. He liked breasts in his porn, breasts and soft lips and the ecstasy on a woman's face--

Lydia. Or Stacy, the way she'd moaned for him. _Honey, ohh. I--oh, love you. Yes..._

_Fuck_ Foreman. He'd broken his end of the deal. He was supposed to hate House, endure him because he couldn't bear to tarnish his image by throwing a cripple out, and instead, _this_\--he'd stopped being boring. Stopped being the saddest example of a wasted life that House had ever seen. If House never got a hard-on staying with him, that was part of the plan. That was _safe_. Trust his brain chemistry to fuck it up. He'd gotten acclimatized to the citalopram, or else the bupropion was starting to compensate for the SSRI side effects.

He couldn't. Couldn't do anything about it here. Foreman's apartment was Mayfield all over again. Worse.

House pushed to his feet, his cane slippery against his palm, and kicked a book out of his way as he started pacing. Why did Foreman hide it? How long had he been hiding it? What had Lucas missed--had there been something to find? A relationship, a one-night stand? Did Thirteen know, when she was sucking his cherry-flavoured cock, that Foreman might be imagining a guy blowing him?

They came in an hour later. House hadn't done more than eat another peanut butter sandwich, his stomach roiling enough to keep him from cooking and making the royal mess of Foreman's kitchen that it deserved. He'd cleaned up, though. Every book in the living room was back on a shelf. Not the shelf he'd taken it from, not Foreman's stupid adherence to the alphabet, but it made sense to House. At least he'd be able to find what he wanted to read now. Everything looked perfect from a few yards away. That was the point, wasn't it? Foreman looked perfect from a distance; get close and find out his life was just as messy as everyone else's.

He heard the key in the lock first, and even though he'd been expecting it, his heart jumped. He reached for the lamp switch he'd stationed himself near. He'd stuffed the magazine under the couch cushions. Foreman wouldn't look for it again. He'd take out the recycling and never look, never wonder, never ask. If House said something, Foreman would throw him out.

_You ruin every relationship. Almost like that was the goal._

This wasn't a relationship. This was a fucking boarding situation. It didn't matter--

The sound of Thirteen's murmur stopped him. As if _Black Inches_ wasn't bad enough. The door opened, and silhouetted them in the hall light for a moment, before Foreman closed it again and flipped a light switch. Bathed in the soft glow, they were kissing by the door, Foreman's hands curved around Thirteen's ass, Thirteen's hands trapped between them and working down to Foreman's belt. If they went back to Foreman's room, House was leaving. Getting the hell out of here. He wasn't going to put up with listening to them having sex.

He could just hear the wet sounds of their mouths, Foreman's stupid smug grin, and catch Thirteen's low, amused laugh when she said something about _riding him_.

"I bet that's what they all say," House said, forcing his voice a hint louder than normal and hitting the lamp switch.

They sprang apart like guilty teenagers. Foreman's smile disappeared into a furious glare. Thirteen looked like she didn't know whether to roll her eyes or laugh--more at Foreman than at him. House stared at him, looking for any sign, carried in the taut line of his shoulders or the exasperated tilt of his head, that showed he knew what he'd done. That even Foreman could have cooked up this whole ridiculous situation and fuck with House's head. Did he think House would run away from one damn porn mag?

Couldn't be. Foreman wouldn't have had the time between House's arrival last night and dragging House with him to work this morning. House sneered on autopilot, pushing whatever buttons he could until Thirteen swept out the door. Foreman turned to him with a look of complete disgust on his face. Where the fuck did he get off, changing when House wasn't looking, all but shoving it in his face? "Striking out with your girlfriend two nights in a row?" House bit out. Thirteen had walked out along with his excuse to leave Foreman's place. After fighting to get in, leaving would look like nothing except giving up. "Is your record any better when you _don't_ have your head a foot up your ass?"

Foreman's slumped shoulders drew back, the fight that had deflated when Thirteen left puffing up again. "What the hell is your problem?" he snapped. "It's not good enough that you drive her away--"

House didn't even know which of them Foreman was trying to lie to. It certainly couldn't be anyone who'd _been in the room_ for the last five minutes. "_I_ didn't ask her to go. Strange that you're projecting on me. Something you needed to share with the class?" House's heart slammed faster, but he ignored how close he'd come to slipping. He'd use the magazine when he knew what it _meant_. How much he could hurt with it. You didn't bring a nuke to a gunfight.

Foreman's expression darkened from disgust to black anger. "Our relationship has nothing to do with you, House."

"Wrong. It _shouldn't_ have anything to do with me, but it obviously does. Otherwise nothing _I_ did would change how you acted." Foreman was such a pompous ass, ignoring the obvious. House gaped at him like a slow kid presented with higher order mathematics. "Or do you always treat her like she's an inconvenience to your life? That would fit with how you treat most people, so it makes sense--"

"_She's_ not the inconvenience--"

Foreman could accuse him of wrecking his life all he wanted. As long as he thought that, then the magazines he got off to didn't make a speck of difference. "No? You pushed her out fast enough." House pushed with his cane, off the back foot, on the attack, peering at Foreman to see just how many guesses were hitting home. "Having trouble letting her get close? The last one you dated didn't like that much, did she? Or do you think Thirteen will kick the bucket before she gets tired of waiting for some commitment? She's dying--maybe you're the best she can do. Not _much_\--"

For a second, he thought it would work. Foreman would grab him by his collar and dump him out on his ass. _Prove it_, he thought, _go on, fucking prove it_. His breath stopped behind his clenched teeth, his eyes locked with Foreman's, watching frustration boil to fury.

Foreman shook his head, like he was rebooting on safe mode. His glower didn't change, but the violent readiness in his fists and chest disappeared as if they'd never been. "Get a better hobby, House," he said with icy loathing. "I'm not your replacement diagnostics toy."

He thumped back to his bedroom and shut the door just short of a slam. House stared at the floor between his cane and his feet, while his anger withered to a sick, cold helplessness.

* * *

Foreman glared at his bedroom ceiling, hands folded behind his head, consciously relaxing his muscles only to find, five minutes later, that he'd locked up like a steel trap. He needed to run. His muscles twitched, imagining a hard session with the heavy bag at the gym. At least he could pour his energy out into it. The edge of his control, all that kept him still, was like fingernails digging into his palms. The clock ticked forward, five, three, ten minutes at a time. Pulling together a productive thought was impossible. He got up and changed into sweats, tried to read, and got exactly nowhere.

The television muttered in his living room long past midnight. House's thump-tap, thump-tap, and the drumming on walls and furniture, didn't stop until well after two. Foreman listened for a half hour longer, and then rolled out of bed. He'd only taken a sweeping glance across the apartment before House had ambushed them. Nothing had been obviously destroyed. Foreman knew better to trust the obvious around House. It didn't take long to find half a dozen petty ways House had fucked with his place. Reshelved every book out of order. Left his TiVo empty--except the recording of _World's Most Terrifying Wrestling Accidents_. And he'd put the peanut butter jar back in the cupboard empty. Christ, did he have _nothing_ better to do with his time?

_No. He doesn't. He quit the only thing he ever cared about_. Foreman pursed his lips, annoyed at himself for wanting to be fair to House. If he couldn't handle the job, he needed to find a different one.

He'd checked over as much of the apartment as possible in as near to complete silence as possible. He wasn't about to poke House with a stick for the pleasure of his quarter-to-three conversation. Still, he glanced surreptitiously up the hall before he pulled the cupboard under the sink open. Adrenaline pumping through him, Foreman scooped his hand through the shredded paper. At first, relief hit him so hard it was almost like a tranq. The magazine was still there. A second later, he pulled it out and realized there was only one. A _Playboy_.

Foreman's gut clenched. Fuck. Fucking _hell_. Cold sweat sprang up under his sweater. There'd been no way to take the fucking recycling out without House tracking his every movement. As a hiding spot, it'd been nothing but a desperate chance in the first place. He'd tossed the magazines in the recycling while House was in the office--the garbage was too obvious, and anywhere else, House could catch him grabbing them later to throw out somewhere else. Since catching House making a simple sandwich last night, Foreman had been waiting for the axe to fall. House was going to snoop. House was going to start making cracks, and this time they'd be backed up by proof. _Not so boring now_.

House knew. He had to know. So why the fuck hadn't he said anything? He'd gotten on Foreman's case about Remy, but not a _word_ about Foreman turning gay behind his back? He'd left one of the three--one of the _Playboys_. Had he stolen the other two? One for evidence, one to beat off to himself? Foreman slapped the magazine back into the bin. Half of him wanted to roar into his office, yank House out of bed, and demand to know exactly what he'd done, what he knew.

Nothing would be more obvious. And House hadn't brought it up yet. Foreman didn't know any subject in the world that would please House more to talk about. The only secrets House kept were his own. Unless he was setting up a fucking ambush, what was the point?

The last thing Foreman needed was to live under the threat of _another_ avalanche. He stalked back to his bedroom, sitting down and scrubbing his face as if he could scrape the circling questions out of his mind. He had to work in the morning, and if he didn't get any sleep, there'd be nothing to fuel him but caffeine and stomach acid.

When the alarm went off at seven AM, Foreman went through his routine mechanically, showering as quickly as possible, filling his gym bag, shovelling breakfast into his mouth. He had to set the coffee pot fresh; the last thing on his mind the night before had been setting the timer. No sign from House. All to the good.

He was nearly ready to go when his phone rang. Foreman flipped it open on the first buzz, glancing over his shoulder at the shut office door. "Yes?"

"Is this Dr. Foreman?"

"Yes," he said, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder. He grabbed his briefcase, gym bag, keys, and hospital ID, concentrating on the voice from the phone to distract himself from the fact that he was running away from House like a fucking coward. It was either a strategic retreat or admitting House had bested him with nothing more than the _possibility_ that he'd found Foreman's porn.

"This is Dr. Nolan, at the Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital. Has Dr. House been staying with you?"

Foreman rolled his eyes hard enough that he wouldn't be surprised if it was audible on the other end of the phone. "Did you send him here?" he asked, sending the accusation flying without a speck of remorse.

"No," Nolan answered. He didn't sound ruffled in the slightest. Just fucking wonderful. Maybe he'd been expecting the question; at least that would prove he'd known House. "You were his choice."

"You'll excuse me if that doesn't comfort me," Foreman said, stepping out of the apartment. He squeezed the door handle, but resisted another feeling-relieving slam.

Nolan laughed quietly. "Oh, I know," he said. "I'm sorry. But if he thinks being with you is the best place for him, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt."

_I'm not_. Much as he'd like to blame House's shrink if House dragged him out of the closet, or threatened to, Foreman couldn't see any part of a therapist's logic that would end with House staying with him. Grimacing, Foreman stopped in the hallway, dropping his chin to his chest. "He's here," he said shortly. "He's fine. Is that all? Do you have any idea of when he can _stop_ being here?"

"That's up to him," Nolan said evenly. "And you. There must be a reason why he chose you. If you can figure out what that is, and show him he can get what he needs elsewhere..." If he expected Foreman to jump in with some optimistic bullshit about _what House needed_\--from _him_\--he'd called at the wrong fucking moment. "But maybe he can't get what he needs elsewhere. Is that so terrible?"

"I'm not your patient," Foreman said shortly. His personal life wasn't some stranger's business. He wasn't about to dump his problems on the man with the professional obligation to take House's shit and serve it back to him as the prime ingredient in a reality sandwich. "You have my number if you need to know he's here. Otherwise, I don't think I'll be of much help."

There was a slight pause, as Nolan took a breath, which sounded far too amused in Foreman's ear. "I think I can see what he sees in you," he said.

Foreman said, "Goodbye," as flatly as he could, and clicked his phone shut, squeezing it in his hand before returning it to his pocket. _What he sees in you._ Christ, as if House wanted him. Foreman snorted. Maybe he'd gotten it backwards--which magazine House wanted for masturbation fodder, and which for blackmail.

Yeah, and maybe they'd just opened a ski chalet in Hell. Nolan was parroting Wilson's line. That there was some connection between them that House took for granted. House might have tainted Foreman's methods, his thinking process, but he'd earned his chance back to change people's perceptions of him as--he grimaced--House Lite. But that was the medicine. It had nothing to do with why House would want to stay with him. If he was frustrated and pissed off, it wasn't a shocking revelation. It was House being a fucking jackass.

The chance he'd been waiting for didn't materialize. Diagnostics didn't have a new case, making his department headship essentially meaningless. Instead of a break, or even the mildly interesting cases he'd been getting in Neurology, Foreman found himself working House's clinic hours for him.

Cuddy smiled at him briefly, somehow combining _professional_ with _I own your ass_. "This is all I have for you right now," she said as she tamped a handful of charts on the admit desk. "You know it's slow when there aren't any referrals."

He didn't think Cuddy would go quite so far as to turn cases away because she thought he couldn't handle them. Besides, calls came through House's office most of the time, and there hadn't been any. The department had been closed for three months; he had to be patient. Foreman forwarded the office phone to his cell and set out to wipe noses and asses and dole out aspirin for the rest of the day. No reprieve from his thoughts. It made no sense for House to keep his goddamn vicious glee to himself unless he was deliberately winding Foreman up. But last night, there hadn't been so much as a hint of it. If Foreman hadn't double-checked, he never would have guessed that House had found his porn at all. His mind kept returning to the fact that the only taboo House ever had was cutting off any discussion of his private life. Only the personal was off-limits. And that had never included straight porn. House _crowed_ about how hot he found women. Made cracks every chance he got.

And talked about how pretty Chase was. Foreman cut off himself off again before his mind went somewhere seriously disturbing. It was a mindfuck. House was picking his moment. That was all.

It was past five when there was a knock on the exam room door. Despite his distraction, Foreman had cleared up most of his charting. He looked up warily, expecting a nurse with more demands, but Remy stuck her head into the room, a smile lighting her face. "You look like you could use a break."

"You don't even know," Foreman said, more grumpy than he'd meant. He leaned back, laced his fingers behind his head, and stretched his spine out. He'd stolen an hour at his gym near the hospital before he'd come in, but he hadn't had much cool down time, and he'd spent the rest of the day hunched on the doctor's stool. He popped his vertebrae with a satisfied grunt. Remy's smile was a sight for sore eyes. He'd just _stop thinking about it_.

Standing up, Foreman dropped the last of his charts in the rack on the door and sauntered towards her, meaning to trap her against the wall. No windows here. "Mm. I kept expecting a call from the fire department saying it looked like arson." Or to see his own face photoshopped onto the bodies of some of the men in _Black Inches_ and stapled on every staff bulletin board in the hospital. Foreman bent to give her a light, greeting kiss, but Remy slipped out of his arms, her happiness disappearing into a puzzled half-frown. "What?" he asked, trying to block off his frustration. It was nothing to do with her.

Remy let out a disbelieving sound. "_What's_ the big deal about having House at your place?"

Foreman laughed, waiting for her to drop the act. As if having his routine, his apartment, his whole life disrupted, and his entire career and reputation at stake, wasn't reason enough. "Are you kidding?"

She took another step away from him, crossing her arms across her chest. "No, I'm serious. What has he really done?"

Where the hell was this coming from? Foreman tried to shake away the immediate irritation that surged up. He'd taken House in for _her_ sake. It wasn't a _surprise_ that House had responded to his hospitality by getting in their way--Remy's as much as his. If she had a problem, she was pointing it in the wrong damn direction. "You don't want to know." He already knew what Remy would say. She thought it was hilarious that House might find that damn magazine. And she probably thought it served him right. He'd respected her enough not to out her, but she scoffed at his reasons for keeping his personal life to himself. Foreman reached for the other things, the little shit that didn't matter. "He's rearranged all my books out of order. He erased that documentary I was saving for the weekend."

"That's it?" She lifted her chin, her green eyes assessing him with a cool stare. "He's played a few pranks on you that you can reverse with a good internet connection and a knowledge of the alphabet? That's why you want him out?"

So it didn't sound like much, but Foreman wasn't about go to into detail about every criticism House had levelled against his relationship with her. Or start arguing about whether the world was ready to accept a black, bisexual doctor. "Isn't that enough? And he's in the way. You _know_ that. Last night--"

"Last night we could have gone to my place. _You_ were the one who insisted on going back to yours." Remy shook her head, staring at him like he was an alien life form--one that she'd discovered squashed on the bottom of her shoe. "You _wanted_ to catch him ruining your stuff! You're disappointed that he hasn't."

"No, I'm not." She could trust _that_. Foreman wouldn't be surprised if House had swept his framed degrees off a shelf with his cane because he thought the crash would get rid of five seconds' boredom. Leaving House alone for _another_ nine hours wasn't the best plan, but Foreman couldn't exactly ditch work to be a full-time nanny. "Remy--" Foreman frowned at her, not certain what she was objecting to. "Seriously, what's the matter? Look, we'll go out for dinner, we'll swing by mine to make sure he hasn't done anything, and tonight we'll go to your place."

"So that you can have sex," she said, setting her jaw.

Foreman raised his eyebrows. "Uh, I wasn't the only one who was turned on in the car yesterday," he said, waiting for her sense of _proportionality_ to catch up with her.

She backed away again, shaking her head. "That's all this is to you."

"This is coming out of nowhere--"

"No, it isn't." Remy fixed him with her stare again, by now looking distinctly pissed off. She paced past the exam bed and then turned around, leaning her hands on it. "Eric, you knew I had Huntington's when we started dating."

She wasn't exactly _helping_ his impression that whatever had set her off, it had nothing to do with him. But her voice was reasonable, trying to explain something to him, so Foreman sighed and took what she said at face value. He didn't want to discuss his own problems. Whatever Remy thought she needed to accuse him of, he'd be fair and hear her out. "Yeah. I wanted to help you--"

Remy cocked her head to the side, her eyes widening as if he was about as dense as a black hole. Foreman grimaced. "I know it didn't work out and I'm sorry," he said. He'd _tried_ to help, but he hadn't known that he'd end up nearly killing her. He'd only meant to get her off the placebo, and he'd put her through neurological trauma that could exacerbate her Huntington's symptoms in the long run. "But there are still new drug trials, new treatments. You're keeping up your core strength. You're healthy!"

"Yeah," she said flatly, as if it was the most desultory celebration ever. "I'm healthy now."

Foreman sighed. They both knew it wouldn't last, but he couldn't believe she was blaming events from nearly a year ago on him _now_, when it still didn't explain what her hang-up about House was. He turned as she brushed past him, opening the exam room door and heading for the foyer. Foreman followed her. "Is that what this is about?" he asked, keeping his tone gentle. "You're worried about getting sick? That has nothing to do with House staying with me."

Remy glared at him over her shoulder. "It's exactly the same," she said, in the same flat tone that didn't expect him to understand.

Foreman knew he was bulling forward when she'd obviously said everything she was going to, but that didn't make it fair that she dumped on him without telling him why. "How is House mindfucking me with pranks the same thing at all?"

"You don't care about him." Remy hit the exit door with her palm and pushed outside, increasing her pace.

Christ, she didn't make sense. "No, I don't! I don't give a shit about him!"

"You would have kicked him out because you thought he'd break your stereo or make a mess."

Foreman lengthened his stride to keep up with her. He wasn't that fucking shallow. "And because he's an ass!"

"Yeah!" Remy finally stopped, her ponytail whipping around as she spun to face him. "Eric, I'm going to do all those things! My mother--"

She was all but changing the subject again. Foreman was getting fed up with being expected to read her mind in order to know what was really bothering her. He knew she'd faced the reality of her Huntington's before, and when the symptoms started in earnest, she'd have to again. He'd still done nothing to deserve the cold shoulder. "I know what's going to happen," he said. He was the damn neurologist between the two of them; he knew better than she did.

Remy stared at him. Maybe he couldn't read her mind, but her glare suggested she knew exactly what he'd just thought. "Fuck you."

That wasn't what he'd _meant_. "I know what you're going to go through," Foreman said, wondering just when she'd put him on the defensive. And whether it was a good thing that she'd distracted him from House. "It's not a surprise...Remy, a few twitches--"

Remy laughed humorlessly. "My mother hit me when she didn't know what she was doing. It wasn't her fault, her arm just failed. I had a bruise I had to explain to my teachers." She stuffed her hands into her pockets and put her head down, striding towards her car.

Foreman shook his head. She wasn't the only one whose mother had disappeared into a disease. He was sorry, but what would that change? Foreman glanced at his own car as they passed it--House had done nothing worse than slide the driver's seat back several inches--but he didn't think of driving off when Remy was this upset, even if he still didn't understand why. "I'm sorry," he said. "But that's not you. Not yet. Not for years."

Remy stopped and titled her head as if the question had just occurred to her. "Do you expect us to be together then?"

Foreman swallowed, watching her face solemnly. Ten years or longer. His longest relationship had been four years, but near the end, it had been more convenient to stay together until they'd finished med school, and then let their internships decide whether they'd stay together. It hadn't happened. "I--I don't know. It's still..."

"You're trying to get out of it," Remy said as if she couldn't have expected any better from him. "_Just_ like you are with House."

"I don't _love_ House!"

"I don't think it would matter if you loved me," Remy snapped. The clouds overhead leached the colour from the fading sunlight, leaving her pale and washed out. "Admit it. You're never going to want someone in your home who might knock over a knickknack or make so much noise that your neighbours complain."

_I love you_. He'd thrown everything into shouting about House, and she didn't hear him. "Remy..."

"That's what's going to happen, Eric! And you know it!" For the first time since the clinic, she took a step closer to him, peering up at him, as if whatever promise she was looking for might be written on his face. "Except--I don't think you do. I don't think you realize that if you're still with me then your life is going to change because I'm in it. That you're going to have to take some time off from being perfect in order to care about someone else!"

Realization crashed down over him. "That's why you wanted me to let House stay with me? So I can practise being a nursemaid to an asshole?" _That_ was the reason his entire professional life was on the fucking chopping block?

"You bastard." Remy's cheeks flamed, and anger snapped in her eyes. "That's who I'm going to be!"

Foreman reached out to her, but she jerked her elbow back from his hand and he sighed. "You'll be you," he insisted, but he knew his anger showed through his words, as if he was accusing her of bringing up something that didn't matter, when it wasn't that at all.

"I saw my mother change. She was _not_ the same person. My father barely loved her at the end, and I _know_ I didn't. And if you can't even deal with House--"

"I can deal with House." Foreman focused on clinging to that thought. If he let Remy's accusations touch him, she might convince him. Was that what she was trying to do? House was wrong--Foreman wasn't the only one between them who pushed when he was scared of getting closer. If Remy needed to hear that he understood she was sick, he could reassure her. "The way House acts, it's his choice, it's because he wants to screw with me."

Remy barely reacted, beyond a slight, uncaring shrug. She started for her car again, arms folded, walking as if she was pushing against a strong wind. She didn't step away when Foreman walked beside her. "Choice doesn't matter. Only actions matter." She wouldn't look at him, and they both stared at the pavement, watching the first few dark spots appear as a spitting, intermittent rain started. "House doesn't even _want_ you to take care of him, he'd be fine if you ignored him. That's why he hasn't messed up your apartment more than he has, because he's getting what he wants out of this--for you to leave him alone."

Foreman shrugged, anger keeping him warm even in the damp wind. His coat flapped, unbuttoned, from when he'd rushed out of the hospital after her. She had no idea what House wanted, or was going to do. Neither did he. "So I don't care. I do care about you!"

Remy circled her car, using her key instead of the remote unlock, keeping him out. "For how long?"

"For as long as it takes." If he had to promise that, he could do it. He didn't want to see her walk away simply because he couldn't meet her where she needed him. He stared over the roof of the car, determined to hold her gaze.

She let out a cynical breath, raising one eyebrow. "I thought you didn't know."

There was just no fucking way to win. "If I say I don't know, you'll get pissed off! I just want--"

"Sex."

Foreman's shoulders slumped, and he bowed his head, risking a look up at her. "To go home to someone who isn't angry with me."

"That won't be me forever."

She'd kept her face blank, but he thought he could see a sign that somewhere beneath being angry or being scared, there was still a chance. "But it's you now."

Remy laughed shortly. "Don't count on it." She yanked open the driver's side door and climbed in. The engine started a second later, and she drove away into the growing haze of rain and cloud.

* * *

House twisted around in the nest he'd made of Foreman's couch when he heard Foreman's key turn in the lock. Pillows, stripped from Foreman's bed, supported his thigh and cushioned the small of his back from the arm of the couch. His plate of grilled cheese sandwiches rested on his good thigh, and a bottle of water sat on the coffee table--no coaster. A couple of homey touches and Foreman's apartment actually looked half-decent. A few food stains would make it truly authentic, but House was still debating ketchup versus Worcestershire sauce and hadn't deployed his condiments yet.

Foreman came in slowly, looking at his feet, and then shot a burning, sulky glance at House from across the room. He looked like a sad, beaten puppy, and it looked like as far as Foreman was concerned, the whip was in House's hands. Since that wasn't new, House ignored him.

And Foreman ignored him back. His keys clunked into place on their little hook by the door; two more clumps were Foreman's dress shoes hitting the back of the closet. With a rustle of a coat on a windchime of hangers, Foreman disappeared down the hallway. In all the ways that counted, Foreman was even more boring than even House had believed. Whatever he was doing back there, it was quieter than the dramatic horns and weeping violins chronicling burly wrestling stars plunging to their accidental deaths on the TV. As far as House could track, it didn't even involve Foreman lugging his computer out of his office and setting it up on the table in his bedroom. A few bucks said Foreman was perfecting the art of pouting and thinking about taking his amateur career pro. Although maybe that was the Hawthorne effect. Maybe when House wasn't around, Foreman hosted amazing parties every night, all his smugness on display, instead of locking himself in to his lair and refusing to offer House a word or a glance.

Wilson would at least _talk_ to him. Sure, anything House did would have triggered an over-the-top reaction--hands flailing, expressions of incredulity and disgust flying across his face, the occasional physically uncoordinated run from whatever room House had last booby-trapped--but at least it would be _diverting_.

"You certainly have interesting standards for punishing yourself," Nolan had said, in genuine good humour.

House had dragged himself in to his appointment, by public transport, even more mind-numbingly boring than when he'd left a day before. The grandest part of the day's adventure had been knocking on Foreman's rental agent door and filling out a form to get a replacement key for one he'd 'lost'. Turned out knowing Foreman's social security number wasn't a waste of a brain cell after all, since it gave House the freedom to come and go whenever Foreman was acting pissy. Seeing Mayfield's stone buildings on the rolling acres of grass had felt like nothing so much as voluntarily snapping himself back into a straightjacket. "I thought quitting wasn't supposed to be a punishment," he said.

"That's not what I meant," Nolan said. "But you're still attached to it. You chose to work on your relationship with the most combative person you know, instead of someone who already has a reason to trust you."

"I'm not working on anything with him," House snapped. He should have said _Wilson has no reason to trust me_, except he didn't know which subject needed the most deflecting. "Foreman's convenient," he muttered.

"I've spoken on the phone with him. He sounds like the most singular _inconvenient_ person you could have picked." Nolan spread his fingers, as if inviting to unload his bullshit in any way he chose. "I confess, I'm interested in what you want from him."

House snapped a sharp glance at him, but Nolan just sat there, looking interested in whatever answer House offered. What House wanted from Foreman had changed overnight, and it was Foreman's fucking fault. His _job_ wasn't the damn problem; it was the reckless, nagging itch of curiosity. He might have gotten thrown out, but at least he could have _known_. How long Foreman had been hiding from House. How much Hosue didn't know.

House dug his chin into his chest and crossed his arms, scattering grilled cheese crumbs into the cracks between leather couch cushions. Staying here wasn't _fun_. Foreman was supposed to get pissed off, but he'd retreated into brooding silence instead. House dragged himself to his feet and limped down the hall. The door to the master bedroom was closed, but the latch hadn't caught. Practically an invitation. House pushed it open with his cane tip, staying in the hallway, and studied Foreman from beneath lowered brows. He was reading, so obviously open to conversation. "No date tonight?" House asked.

Foreman had kept up the ignoring facade longer than House would have thought, glowering down into his journal even after House pushed the door open, but he looked up at that with a stony glare. "Fuck off, House."

Foreman had always been shit at hiding his reactions. Not that he had many. But pouty, hard-done-by frustration was an easy read. "So you had one, and it didn't go well."

"Remind me exactly what I did to you to deserve this?"

House dug into his jeans pocket--the same pair he'd been wearing yesterday; he was still living on the Mayfield rotation of two pairs of jeans and three shirts, and Foreman's washing machine had looked at him funny when he'd thought about stuffing the rest of his clothes in it. He came up with a foil packet--one of Thirteen's cherry-flavoured condoms. "Not kinky enough for her?" he asked. "When a lady likes cherry, it's not nice to get a whole box full of plain."

Foreman's eyes widened, and if anything, the vein throbbing in his forehead looked a little more likely to pop, but all he gritted out was, "Thanks for the advice." House nodded, satisfied. "But you'll excuse me if I don't exactly see you as my romantic ideal."

_So what's your romantic ideal?_ Fucking stupid question, but it jumped, sneering and derogatory, to the tip of his tongue. Foreman, the Love Doc. Thinking he knew what the hell other people felt. Restless, House realized he couldn't ask Foreman for what the hell he needed to know. And Foreman was pretending he didn't care again--he _sucked_ at it, but it was annoying anyway; he opened his journal and pointedly started reading it. Or staring at it, at least; his eyes weren't moving, so House standing in his doorway was at least stopping him from getting anything done.

House set his head to one side and stared for thirty seconds without effect. "I'm going out," he snapped.

Foreman snorted. "Where?"

At least he still couldn't resist responding. Waiting for a fight, House said, "Do you care?"

With a quick glance, Foreman looked him up and down, his lips tight. "Fine. Have it your way, House."

God_damn_ him. "I'm taking your keys." He might as well keep to himself that Foreman would have a tidy fine on his next rental statement for the key House had acquired.

"Don't fuck with my car," Foreman said, but he'd already buried his nose in the journal again. House stamped down the hall and yanked Foreman's keys off the hook, jangling them as loud as he could. Foreman didn't show up to reclaim them, so House took it as read that he wasn't going to call a locksmith the second House was out of the building.

Even the elevator felt claustrophobic. Foreman's cable and his medical journals had barely kept boredom at bay, and this was only the first day House had spent in the damn apartment. Wilson hadn't shown up again. House had been running through a dozen conspiracy theories about what would keep him away, and quashed them all with the fact that it had been all of twenty-four hours, and if Wilson couldn't leave him alone for that long when House wasn't bored, he'd be on the run from his interference.

He unlocked Foreman's car from twenty feet away and rolled his eyes when he opened the door and had to adjust the driver's seat again. Even when Foreman hid out in his bedroom, House could feel him in the apartment. Like he had the place wired for CCTV and was watching everything House did. Or just the fact that his body temperature raised the ambient heat by half a degree, or his breathing didn't fit the pattern of the heaters. And instead of Foreman hiding a secret, House was the one with the gay porn underneath the sofabed mattress. The window for mocking the hell out of Foreman would close if he ever found it there. House's attention kept going back to it, even though he hadn't opened it since the night before.

House kept the usual phone number tucked in his wallet. He could call someone, get himself taken care of for a couple hundred bucks. He pulled out of Foreman's parking space and drove, eyes on the road but going nowhere.

It'd been months. Closer to a year. The last guy--Emilio--had been damn cocksure. No pun about it. He was whipcord thin, so that his skin seemed poured on over his musculature. Sitting on the edge of his bed, still wearing pyjama pants, House had watched Emilio's ribs appearing and disappearing in his back as he'd bobbed his head over House's dick. Not going hard. Slow, but insistent, like he could coax an erection out of a corpse with his tongue and enough time. He'd done better than some, gotten House halfway there despite the pain streaking in bright flares from his heelbone to his spine.

House pushed him off at last and said, "Do it," and Emilio, wet-lipped, grinned like a greyhound, all sharp teeth and eagerness. He'd let House get himself to his back, then yanked the waistband of his his pyjamas down over his ass. Fingered House, the lube still cold on his hand and dripping over House's balls and the sheet. The bed dipped when he climbed on, knees bracketing House's thighs. When he slid in, his cock was hotter than it had any right to be. He set himself, adjusted, gave a tentative thrust that made House grunt and tighten his fingers in the sheets.

"There, huh?" Emilio said, smug, and then he shoved in. His cock found House's prostate again, a_gain_, the hollow of his belly slapping against House's back, his hipbones digging into House's ass. House got up on one knee, losing traction against the bed, and _pushed_, while Emilio snapped his hips forward, pushing a short, pained groan out of him. _Yeah. Yes. Fucking--there_\--no words, but sounds, and the smell of sweat and sharp cheap cologne, the almond thickness of the lube. House arched his neck, his shoulders bunching, while Emilio shoved him back against the bed with every thrust until he couldn't fucking _think_. Couldn't feel, either--not good, not bad--until with one jarring _push_ the painpleasure sharpened, heightened, and carried him over.

Foreman couldn't manage that. House had seen him kiss Thirteen, intense, but gentle, leaning in and chuckling softly at some comment she'd made. If Foreman liked guys, he'd probably be the same way. Jerk him off slow while kissing him deep and dirty.

It was all theoretical, anyway. Lydia had kissed him and he'd had to know why. Wilson said he loved Amber and House had tested that, too, trying to reconstruct their first meeting from every last scrap he knew about their personalities.

He wound up outside Thirteen's place. That kiss when they'd stepped in the door hadn't been the first. Whatever they'd been doing, it'd gotten hot and heavy long before they'd come up to the apartment. Foreman's car didn't help House's curiosity; Thirteen had been driving. Foreman was probably too much of a wet blanket to have sex in anyone's car. There were the condoms, but the car smelled like Foreman--like his pillows, anyway, the ones House had been nosing into at night and using to prop up his leg.

House caught sight of an open spot on the street and slid the Lexus into it. Thirteen's building was older, and dead simple to get into with a heavy jar to the lock. House walked past the bare, creaky halls, and knocked on Thirteen's door.

She opened it a minute later, too fast to have been debating over seeing him through the peephole, too slow to have been sitting around stewing. House took in her workout clothes in a glance. Yoga pants and a tank top. Earbuds dangled around her neck and she'd knotted her hair on top of her head in a messy bun. Frustration--didn't take much of a diagnosis.

"Not getting enough from Foreman?" House asked, assuming his welcome and brushing past her to get inside. "And here I thought he'd be the type to go all night long."

Thirteen rolled her eyes, but she closed the door behind him and headed for the kitchen, coming out a second later with a glass of water. "What are you doing here, House?"

"Foreman's pissy." House swung around to catch her reaction, then went back to studying the loft's open plan and industrial brickwork to hide his own.

"That's new?"

House raised his eyebrows, exaggerating a pout. "I assume you caused the condition. It's harshing my mellow."

"And it's all about how comfortable _you_ feel invading his home." Thirteen walked past him and switched off the television, and the three limber women in identical tights in the middle of a downward-facing dog.

Disappointed, House twisted his lips. "Gee, Foreman, you sure are more attractive as a white woman." He let himself fall back on her couch, taking up as much room as possible. "You wanted me to stay there."

"Yeah." Thirteen shrugged, trying to throw his attention off the fact that she couldn't meet his eyes by being all sweaty while she drank her water. "Now I'm not so sure."

"Has Princeton run out of motels?" House looked around, waiting for the obvious to come into focus for both of them. "Or, wait! _This_ place has a bed! I remember it. Sad lack of toys, though..."

"Did you need my dildo, House? Is that what you came to pick up?"

House's heart stuttered. He leaned forward, narrowing his eyes at her. If she was trying to get rid of him by affecting boredom, that line just killed any chance of getting rid of him so easily. "You didn't have one before, when it was all anonymous sex," he said. "The only reason you'd need toys was if things were getting stale and you needed to change it up. But I doubt Foreman would ever allow anything but the sacred penis fuck you when he's around..."

"It's for when he's not. Like right now." Thirteen threw his own favourite face back at him, mock surprise with just a hint of 'you're a moron'. For a grasshopper, she did it pretty well. "Surprisingly enough, because he wanted to keep an eye on you. So why are you here again?"

The first domino toppled over and House sat back, his mouth opening. The clues slotted together one after the other. If Thirteen wasn't lying and she used the dildo to get over her frustration, House wouldn't have caught her doing _yoga_. It wasn't that she didn't like orgasms to relax. She didn't want to think about Foreman--which meant she associated the dildo with him. Whether she used it herself or not, she--or _he_\--had bought it. As a couple. But couples that included _Foreman_ didn't buy penis substitutes. Unless-- "It's not for you."

"I just said it was. Have I shared enough of my sex life with you to make you leave me alone? Because I was working on my crane pose."

She was avoiding Foreman by working her core muscles. So it was about her existential angst and putting it off another few measly months if she could. Physically, House relaxed, but mentally, he poised himself to leap on whatever hints she dropped. "Go ahead," he said, waving expansively. "Women's bodies twisting and turning does absolutely nothing for me, so you're safe from my lust."

"Yeah, I'll bet." She took a seat in the corner of the couch, curling her legs under her and propping her forehead in one hand, eyes half-lidded. Whatever had happened between her and Foreman, it wasn'g going to be solved by a crane pose.

House waited until she'd relaxed, her expression sadder and distant, and then he said conversationally, "So Foreman's into that?"

Thirteen's head jerked up and she met his eyes, answering quickly. "No. He's fucking repressed."

"I didn't say what he might be into," House pointed out. "You're denying something I didn't even name. You think I think he's repressed."

"I swear," Thirteen said dryly. "It's vanilla, every night."

"You called him Rocky Road."

She blinked at him, her sarcasm cracking. "What?"

"Taub said--"

"No, he didn't." She was wary now, looking past everything he said for the trap, but House had already hit the high points. The rest was detail. "You haven't even been back long enough--"

"You weren't tired of women," House interrupted, "but you called Foreman Rocky Road. No one's Rocky Road if they're vanilla."

Thirteen peered at him, her expression changing minutely. She wasn't upset, or pissed off at his questions. Something had changed. "House, why are you interrogating me about how Foreman is in bed?

House awarded her a point and backed off. "Because I've already pictured you with everyone else I know." He nodded patronizingly. "Lots of time to fill in an institution. You'll understand when you're older."

The distraction worked. Cool anger crossed Thirteen's face. She stood up and pointed him at the door. "Get out. I'm not giving you more material to fuck with Foreman."

"Which means that such material exists," House said, smirking unrepentantly.

She took his cane from where he'd left it leaning against the couch and set it upright next to him. House gave it a long stare, then shrugged and accepted it, since she wasn't moving. He braced himself on the handle and stood up--her stupid couch was too deep. Thirteen didn't wait for him to work out his balance before giving him a shove at the door. "Go home. Work your crap through so that I can have my boyfriend back."

House turned around, resisting her push, and asked, "You don't have him when I'm there? I wonder why that is. He asked you if you missed women, but you never asked him if there was something _he_ missed--but you bought a dildo." He grinned. "Filling a gap?"

For all the anger House had provoked, he hadn't expected to see Thirteen turn pale as milk. She snapped, "House--" and then swallowed back her words before she managed to speak. "Don't--don't do this to Foreman. Don't tell him."

House gazed at her, his pulse jumping in his throat. He'd been _right_. Foreman couldn't dream up a game like this just to mess with him. "You'd have him back if he threw me out," he said shortly. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

Thirteen shook her head, her lips pressed together. "Why the hell are you screwing with us?" she spat. "Old targets getting fed up with you so you need to alienate everyone else?"

It was a good attack. She'd learned something from him. But too little, too late. With a shrug, and as gently as he ever pointed out the truth, House said, "It's not screwing with you if it's something you already know."

* * *

By the fifth day, they'd gotten into the habit of sullenly ignoring each other. House staked out Foreman's living room and his office as his territory; Foreman ceded them in the interest of staying the fuck out of House's radius. He'd given up on the computer front, too. Everything that could possibly be sensitive was cleared off the desktop and the password set to a random alphanumeric with a couple of asterisks thrown in, mostly to keep House busy--he'd snuck the keyboard back so that he could keep guessing. Foreman kept his laptop with him at all times. He did his work in the dining room, read in his bedroom, and put up a wall of silent treatment in between.

Yesterday, Foreman had opened the door warily after work and come in quietly. He'd never seen the need to make a racket in every room he occupied. Since House _did_, but the television wasn't blasting Shark Week, Foreman thought at first that House was out. At his shrink appointment, or wherever else he disappeared to, tromping in later from long walks that Foreman didn't ask about. Shrugging out of his suit jacket, Foreman glanced into the living room to see how much of a disaster it was, and then let his shoulders slump with a sigh. House was napping on the couch.

Asleep, House never looked like the force of insidious chaos he was. The furrows on his forehead eased into faint pain-lines, and his mouth relaxed out of its constant, tense scowl. One arm pillowed his head, the other disappeared under the old patchwork quilt draped over him. It didn't quite cover his bare feet. For a moment, Foreman watched the slow rise and fall of his chest. Long enough to make sure House hadn't stopped breathing completely. If he'd gotten a fix, or gotten back on methadone, and gone into respiratory arrest on Foreman's couch--

House turned his head, his mouth opening and closing around a swallow or a sound. Foreman froze. The arm under the blanket moved, rubbing over his stomach; House's shoulder flexed a bit and pulled at his t-shirt. Foreman frowned and jerked his gaze up to House's face. House's eyes were closed, but his breathing wasn't even enough for deep sleep. His eyelids fluttered, and his lips parted around a rasping breath. His hand drifted further south, still under the blanket. Foreman shook himself sharply and stalked away. Whether House knew Foreman was there and was trying to mess with him, or he didn't, and his hand was innocently rasping at an itch on his stomach--Foreman didn't want to know. Not going to think about it. House looked unguarded like that because he was asleep, no different from every nap he'd taken in his lounge chair at work. Foreman had only been checking House's breathing, anyway, although he didn't know why he bothered. House would never die on Foreman's hands, because even that would be less inconvenient than having him as a roommate.

But except for his obnoxious presence--which was a fucking big "except"--House wasn't difficult to live with. Foreman hated how simple it had been to start making enough food for two people. House was eating him out of frozen dinners and lunch meats and canned soup. It went against the grain, but it just made more sense to feed him as long as he was cooking for himself. Two days ago, Foreman had brought groceries in, and the sound of rustling paper bags had been like a can opener to a cat. House appeared in the doorway, wrinkling his nose at the vegetables and butcher cuts Foreman was putting away. He rifled through every bag until he found a package of pork rinds that Foreman had thrown in on a whim. Forget a cat hearing a can; the pork rinds were damn doggie treats. House's face lit up--there was no other way to describe it--and he limped back out to the living room, already munching, all without a word.

Foreman had been used to House's pacing from working with the man for five years, and he knew it helped his leg. House played music loud and the TV louder, usually something with explosions, but Foreman had had neighbours before and he'd also been to college, so if House was trying to piss him off, he wouldn't manage it like that.

It was...easy. It was like living with a bomb on a hung fuse. Foreman was tiptoeing around his own damn apartment. Change didn't work like this, and no one knew that better than House.

He'd had moods like this before at work. Distant, moody, introspective, and looking at anyone who interrupted him like they'd murdered his beloved family pet. But they didn't last. And House _not talking_ was practically a call for an intervention.

That was Wilson's job. Foreman was _not_ going to volunteer, no matter how many times he caught House looking at him with a strange look on his face, like he was trying to figure Foreman out, but, for once in his life, failing miserably.

The fifth night, Foreman was already frowning to himself as he got off the elevator. House would be on the couch, watching something obnoxious. Foreman would cook, dump half on a plate that he'd leave on the counter for House to fetch whenever he wanted to get off his lazy ass. Then he'd eat, and work, and call it a night. His calls to Remy had mostly gone straight to her voicemail, and when they didn't, she told him her schedule was hectic because she couldn't leave everyone hanging just because _he_ wanted her back in Diagnostics.

"I thought you wanted to work Diagnostics," Foreman said. He'd fought with Cuddy to get the department reinstated for Remy's sake as well as his own.

Her sigh could have been a shrug. "Of course I do. But I still have to finish up here. I'll see you Monday."

Foreman bowed his head, running his thumb over the edge of the phone. "We'll get a case soon."

"I know. Good night, Eric."

"'Night," he said, but she'd already hung up.

Maybe she was waiting for him to admit he was wrong. Apologize. Or prove something--God, why did Foreman proving himself always have to involve House? Proving he could care about _House_ wasn't fair to ask. Making it some kind of test, when his feelings about Remy were completely different.

If they stayed that way. Scowling, Foreman thumped into the apartment, dropping his briefcase and switching on the lamp, since the lights were resolutely off.

From the living room, House snapped, "Don't you have any consideration for cripples?"

"Not usually, no," Foreman said, focusing on his coat as he hung it up. After four days of mutual silent treatment, he wasn't even surprised to hear House attack him the second he set foot in the door. "What's the problem, House?"

House let out a sound halfway between a grunt and a snarl. He was hunched forward on the couch, the muscles in his forearms standing out as he leaned against the arm. A line of sweat showed through his t-shirt, and the light Foreman had turned on showed him paler than usual. His close-cropped hair stuck out in damp spikes.

Foreman put his keys away and went into the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. After a few swallows, he brought it out to the living room and set the glass on the end table at House's elbow. House's hands dug into his thigh as if he could hold the pain still through his pyjama pants--or as if holding himself in place hard enough would keep him from flying apart.

House bristled, hunching even further as if he expected Foreman to drag him out of his guard position. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Getting you some water," Foreman said. "What's your breakthrough med?"

"Don't have one."

Great. House must have downed every last pill and hadn't refilled his prescription. The idea of a trip to the pharmacy during the rush hour Foreman had only just escaped was annoying, but having House suffering in his living room wasn't going to do either of them a bit of good. "Give me your scrip and I'll fill it," he said.

House twisted to stare up at him, his eyes red-rimmed and challenging. "I don't _have_ one."

That couldn't be right. But why the hell would House sit around in pain if he could have even made it to the phone to call a pharmacy that delivered? Foreman's confusion gave way to indignation. "No breakthrough med? House, that's insane."

"Yeah, I have the certificate and everything." House let his head drop again. The damp t-shirt clung to House's back, outlining the tension growing in his muscles, knotted and bunching, and the sharp angle of his shoulderblades. "Go away."

"No. You're in pain--"

"Not new." House's fingers spasmed tighter in a pushing, kneading motion. "You've never cared before."

Foreman rolled his eyes. "You've always been stoned out of your mind before." Irritated that his usefulness ended before he could even grab House his pills, he asked, "What are you on, then?"

"Naproxen."

"That's all?" For fuck's sake, Foreman could get Aleve over the counter for a muscle strain that would work as well as whatever dosage House was on. "That's not even a narcotic."

House's voice rasped in his throat as he spat out the words. "Addict, remember?"

As if Foreman had managed to miss that over the last five years. It still didn't make it responsible medicine to give a patient with chronic nerve damage a regimen that amounted to a pat on the head. "Yeah, but you have a pain problem, House."

"Gold fucking star," House snarled in the general direction of his feet. "Now get the hell out."

Foreman glared at the back of House's head. He could see the thinning spot in his hair, made even more obvious by his scalp-close buzz cut. Staring at it, he grimaced, stubbornness setting his jaw. "This is my apartment."

"And it's _my_ pain!" House had been keeping still, fighting any jar to his leg, but he twisted around, fury burning as he glared at Foreman. "And _my_ leg. Get the fuck away from me."

Not if he was going to be a moron about his own treatment. Breakthrough pain could increase his overall levels if he didn't do something about it before he knotted himself up and tightened all his muscles, and if he didn't get some sleep. "You need something long-acting. Tramadol--"

"Right, because that's what I need, a serotonin storm."

Foreman's eyes widened. He felt like an idiot--of course House's psychiatrist would have him on antidepressants, even if he apparently didn't know shit about chronic pain. The shock was that House had agreed to take them. "You're on SSRIs?"

House let out a sound, and Foreman tensed until he realized it was a hoarse bark of laughter. "Don't you trust me? I'm hurt."

"I didn't _doubt_ you," Foreman snapped. He might have given in and let House stay, but that didn't make him responsible for House's treatment. "I don't pay attention to what you're taking."

House stilled for a second, and then continued his massage, hesitating for a moment longer before he muttered quietly, "I'm on citalopram and bupropion."

Running through the contraindications and side-effects, Foreman frowned, wondering when it would stop surprising him that House could be honest. There were other meds House could take, but he wasn't Foreman's patient. House's shrink might have a plan for how he wanted to deal with House's spikes in pain. This was the first one Foreman had seen--once House reported it to Nolan, he'd adjust House's meds, and he might not appreciate Foreman's interference. House was right about one thing; Foreman couldn't simply disregard that he was an addict. He wasn't actively drug-seeking from Foreman, probably because he thought Foreman would laugh in his face. That was fine. Foreman wasn't going to enable him, and, he realized, he appreciated that House hadn't tried to con him. "Fine, no narcotics, no tramadol." House still looked like he was rocking into the pain, trying to shove it away in long pushes. Foreman ducked his head, frowning. He wasn't going to just walk away without doing anything. That'd only confirm what Remy thought of him. What everyone thought of him, Cuddy and Wilson too, when they'd gaped at him because House chose to come here. It was what House expected, too, and _that_ pricked like a splinter he couldn't dig out. "I can get you a hot water bottle and some earplugs," he said.

"Why would I need earplugs?"

"They're for me," Foreman said. "You can pace all damn night if you want."

House snorted, but it was more amused than disdainful. Foreman took it for agreement. He heard House grab the water glass off the end table and drink it down before he'd even left the room. The hot water bottle, that he used sometimes when he'd strained a muscle at the gym, was under the bathroom sink. The tap ran hot pretty quickly. Foreman waited for it to scald his hand and then filled the bottle.

He could do this. Whether Remy would take his word for it or not, it wasn't beyond him. He was a doctor, for God's sake; he'd had difficult patients before. House was a bastard and a pain in the ass and the grumpiest person Foreman had ever met, but nothing he'd done tonight had been out of line. Foreman wrapped the hot water bottle in a towel and brought it out to House.

The glass he'd left on the end table was full of urine. Foreman stopped short. "House, for fuck's sake."

House glared at him like a pouty kid. "It was either in the glass or on your precious couch."

Foreman wondered how long House had been holding it--how long he'd been a prisoner on Foreman's couch. With an exasperated stare, Foreman threw the hot water bottle at him. The towel came loose, but House caught both. He placed the bottle on his pyjama-clad thigh, and his eyes closed. Foreman couldn't tell if it was a wince of relief or pain, but a nearly invisible shiver worked through House's body and he relaxed infinitesimally, but he was still curled over himself, shoulders like rocks.

It'd never been like this at work. Bad pain days meant shrugging off more insults than usual, then watching House limp for the door. Or else coming back from a test to find House had dosed himself so hard that all he was was a pair of red-rimmed and dreaming eyes, too stoned to mumble or think, and Wilson, sighing, had to be called to help House to his feet and get him out.

This, the nakedness of it, the hissing breaths between House's teeth, was far more immediate. He needed something _now_. In the long run, the antidepressants would help, and over-the-counter meds might cut down the everyday pain. Breakthrough pain like tonight's was what the Vicodin should have been for, so that House could sleep through the worst of it. Foreman wasn't so heartless that he'd point out that House had put himself in this position by abusing the Vicodin in the first place; House already knew that. If he hadn't abused it for years, taken a pill every time he stubbed his toe, he could have had some now.

Foreman didn't have any room to talk. It'd been habituation that had gotten House to this point in the first place. Sighing at himself, he sat down on the coffee table, across from House where he could study him and judge his pain levels. "Methadone," he said. House had gotten into a pain program last year that had worked better than anything else House had tried. As long as they'd all _known_ he might conk out and stop breathing, and Cuddy was willing to regulate his doses, it was the best solution Foreman had seen.

House lifted his head and stared at him like he was a moron. An incompetent moron who had failed out of medical school. "Still an opiate," he said. "I haven't forgotten chemistry."

Fuck, House really seemed serious about this. He'd been here all afternoon, at least. Even if he didn't have any drugs stashed in Foreman's apartment, there were places he could go. His own home, where he'd probably ratholed away more pills than even Tritter's search warrant had found.

Maybe he meant it. Foreman bowed his head, glancing up quickly at House and catching nothing but sullen, obstinate silence. He took the glass of urine to the kitchen and poured it down the sink, wrinkling his nose as the sharp smell wafted up. He washed his hands and the glass twice afterwards, and then, with a grimace, dropped the glass in the trash. Even if he'd put it through an autoclave, he never wanted to drink from something that had held House's piss.

He left the water running and braced his hands against the edge of the counter. Trying to put Remy in House's place, her limbs trembling with chorea, made him grip harder, the countertop digging into his hands. Janice, his most improved patient in the drug trial, had already been incontinent. No saving the couch in the long run.

And Janice's personality was still essentially the same. Essentially. She'd been in the waiting room once when she'd suddenly jumped to her feet, her arms twitching out from her body as she screamed obscenities, her voice echoing down the hall so that Foreman had come running. Two orderlies had restrained her while she twisted in their grip, raging against them and trying to bite. Five minutes later, it'd been over, except for the tear tracks down her cheeks and the hoarseness of her voice when she'd jerk-stepped her way into his office for her appointment, shame weighing her head down.

Remy was right. If Foreman couldn't do this, he had no right to even think that he could stay with her. If he couldn't match his stubbornness against House's for one night, then what could he ever offer to Remy?

Foreman sighed and took off his suit jacket, then thought better of it: House might vomit on him if the pain got bad. He went back to his room to change completely, into jeans and a hoodie.

"I've searched your whole apartment," House said when Foreman got close. "I could've gotten this for myself if I wanted." He'd leaned back against the couch, his body all but limp, his right hand resting over the hot water bottle like he was warming himself at a fire. He opened his eyes, his gaze flicking across Foreman, and he lifted one lip in disdain. "Thought you were born in pinstripe," he said, but there was no zip to the words.

"You were too slow," Foreman said. He already knew House had searched the whole place, but hearing him admit it made Foreman's lungs contract. Five days had to be too long for House to hold in a secret so juicy. The pain was distracting him now, but it hadn't been for the last four days. God, Foreman hated him, the way he tried to get into Foreman's brain and break him down. He was probably waiting for Foreman to ask, to hint, so that House could hold the truth above him like he was teasing a dog with a treat. Foreman clenched his teeth, but he went back to where he'd been sitting, on the coffee table across from House, and leaned in.

House ramped up his sneer. "Playing doctor?"

Foreman met his eyes sharply, wondering what the hell that meant, but House's gaze was clear and direct. "Checking your temp." He reached for House's wrist. "What's your pulse?"

"I can take my own fucking pulse." House jerked his arm back, and then grunted harshly. "_Fuck_."

"Yeah, but not your temp." Foreman reached again, grabbing House's hand and jerking his arm straight. The creases in House's forehead deepened. As soon as Foreman was sure he wouldn't pull away again, he took House's wrist in a light grip, his fingertips finding his radial pulse. It was fast and strong, with a slight thready murmur. His skin was warm, and clammy with sweat, but not overheated. No danger, although the pain was clearly setting House off.

"Are you _done_?" House took his hand back pointedly. Foreman let him go, sitting back. He couldn't even give House an aspirin for his temp, considering how much naproxen he had to have in his system. It'd be pointless, anyway.

Foreman almost respected House's determination to gut his way through the pain. That wasn't a change. House had never let anyone do anything for him that the drugs couldn't. "This is stupid," he said. House didn't _have_ the drugs now, but he was still too pig-headed to ask for help.

Cleaning up after House hadn't killed him yet. If Foreman had a regular cleaner, then it wouldn't be a problem at all. And House was nearly silent, apparently resigned to Foreman leaning over him. "You have a temp," he said.

"It's just the pain."

"I know."

"So fuck _off_," House said, but there was no force left behind the words.

Foreman shook his head. He slid forward, off the table to kneel in front of the couch. House's eyes snapped open and he eyed him with a desperate, flaring glance. Foreman touched House's leg, finding the bands of muscle like iron just above House's knee.

House's breath burst out of his throat in a rasping exhale. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I can help." Foreman checked House's expression again. He was practically hyperventilating, fear widening his eyes.

"No, you fucking can't."

It couldn't be that difficult. Foreman had seen how House was kneading the pain out of his leg. Foreman could touch House; he could _care_. Make it better, help him relax. Or he could if House gave him one damn chance. "Look, do you want me to--"

Tight and bitter and desperate, House simpered. "Not tonight, honey, my leg hurts."

"What the hell--" Foreman pushed off the couch and stood up, dizzy for a second at how fast he'd stood. He was a fucking moron. House wasn't afraid Foreman would hurt his leg, he wasn't worried that Foreman would make the pain worse. House thought Foreman was _hitting_ on him.

He didn't need another fucking clue. House had found the magazine. He'd gone straight past mocking Foreman to being terrified of him, the fucking homophobic asshole. Racist jokes weren't enough. Foreman should have fucking remembered. House hated everybody, and he'd just found a reason to double the shit that he'd deal out to Foreman. That was what made the difference between House and Remy. No matter how she changed, she'd never hate who he was. "I was going to say give you a massage, but whatever, House," he said, a core of fury burning under his sternum. "You never had to worry I'd touch _you_."

He grabbed his keys and slammed out into his bedroom, leaving House to his pain. It was too good for him.

* * *

House decided to mimic the effects of erosion on Foreman's drywall, using a small rubber ball as the equivalent of a thousand years of rain. Bounce, the spot just to the right of Foreman's flatscreen, bounce on the floor, smack back into House's hand. Last night's pain had retreated in a murky, aching slog around two AM, leaving him soaked in sweat, the hot water bottle long since gone icy. Leaning heavily on his cane and groping his way with his left hand on the wall, House had made it to the bathroom, where he'd promptly vomited in the sink. He'd rinsed his mouth, and pissed again, before sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and gathering his strength to get ten feet down the hall to Foreman's office and the fucking sofabed. He wanted his own damn mattress, king-size, so that he could roll across it, tangle himself in the sheets, bite down on a pillow and scream if he'd needed to. All he had instead was two thin quilts and the knowledge that Foreman was across the hall, ready to snap his head off if House made a sound.

The doorknob turned, and House held the ball on the rebound long enough to see who it was. Too early to be Foreman, who trudged in most days around six. And Wilson would have scruples about acquiring Foreman's key.

He nodded shortly when Thirteen walked in, returning her keys to her purse. "What the hell did you do to him?" she asked.

Getting kicked out of Foreman's apartment was a fucking formality at this point. The only mystery was whether it'd be out the door or headfirst from a fourth-storey window. "Your boyfriend came on to me last night," he said. He didn't have to be here. Nothing was tying him to this apartment or to Foreman's fucking charity. That was all it had been. His hand had been warm on House's knee, warm enough to feel even through the swollen tight heat of the pain. He'd imagined Foreman's hand climbing higher, trying to dig him out of the well of the pain with a handjob that wouldn't work. He wasn't going to waste what little sex drive he had on Foreman, on Foreman's fucking pity.

Thirteen tilted her head, as if she was seriously considering it. House stared at her, feeling his jaw drop. "You put him up to it!" he accused her. "You wanted him to _care_."

"So? You wanted him to not to care," Thirteen shot back. "You wanted to prove no one would, and now you're angry that he's not made of stone." She cocked her head, waiting for him to spill the details. "He seriously came on to you?"

"Close enough for you." House snapped his wrist forward, rebounding his ball off the wall. Thirteen had no reason to track him down. She couldn't expect Foreman to be here during the middle of the day. He eyed her sideways and sent the ball flying again. Everyday clothes for the hospital. Complaining about Foreman. They'd been working together. "What's the case?"

Thirteen shook her head, letting out a short laugh. "It's not CRPS."

"And it's a problem working for Foreman," House said, whipping the ball again. She was holding out on him; he wasn't going to let her bury her head in her illusions. "Because you didn't figure out until now that if you're working for him, you're not working for the medicine. You're working _for him_."

"You're the one who pissed him off," Thirteen said. ""Why are you telling me this?"

_Because I can't work backwards from one bad diagnosis to the original symptoms, so I don't know what the damn case is_. "No reason. Tell me about the case."

Thirteen arched an eyebrow, but she finally started giving him an actual description of the patient. House grunted at her description of the tests. _No reason_. No fucking reason at all. Foreman didn't believe his relationship with Thirteen could save him. Foreman was screwed up but he didn't believe it because he thought he was happy. As if Thirteen could save him from who he was. The sooner they both learned that, the sooner Foreman would get all hurt and pissy. He'd go back to the pointless detente, no words exchanged and no one asking House how he was feeling.

Nolan ambushed him with that question when he'd gone in for his weekly tune-up. House glared at him and spun around, feeling like a tiger in a zoo cage, with Nolan as the kid with the stick. "You need to know what you're feeling," Nolan said. "Even if you can't tell me. For today, I'd settle for you acknowledging that you feel something at all."

"Isn't this where you say we only have five minutes left and we'll continue this next week?"

"We have fifty minutes left, House."

House twisted his heel in the carpet, the vicious burn of pain, not quite exhausted from last night, hitting him like a punch. "I'm hiding my big gay love for my roommate," he said, but the twist of Jerry Springer drama he'd meant to add to the words soured in his mouth.

"You're attracted." Nolan leaned back in his easy chair, so perfectly fucking relaxed, because they weren't talking about _his_ bit on the side. "Did he say something? Or...?"

"He tried to give me a massage," House said, his lip curled. Not that Foreman had ever intended the happy ending. It would've been impossible, anyway. Blood burned in his face. This was worse than his father grilling him about his high school girlfriends. "It's not like with Lydia," House snapped.

Nolan raised his eyebrows calmly. "Isn't it?"

"She didn't want to fix me."

"As far as I can tell, neither does he. I thought that's why you chose to go there."

"You have a lot of theories."

"I wouldn't need theories if you told me."

"I don't _know_," House shouted, slamming his cane against the side of Nolan's desk. He leaned on it heavily, the carpet blurring in front of his eyes. He'd slept maybe four hours, in broken fragments. "I don't fucking know."

"You didn't know you were attracted to him?"

"I didn't know he'd turn me down!" He'd never wanted Foreman. Yeah, he was hot, House wasn't _blind_, but he'd been straight, and no matter what anybody thought, House didn't throw himself in front of moving vehicles for _kicks_.

"I thought you said he tried to help you?"

There was just no getting the point with him. Every answer had to have a dozen workarounds. He was worse than Wilson. No inane theories or lectures, just endless patience that House couldn't fight without letting more and more details slip. "Not because he wanted me."

"If he likes men," Nolan began, counting out the points on his fingers, "then it's possible he likes you; but he doesn't like you. So it's not general anymore. It's not the empty dislike of someone who doesn't care. It's the specific personal dislike of someone who might have cared but doesn't." He gazed steadily at House, smiling slightly and waiting for his reaction. "That's...pretty complex."

"Yeah, I'm just that complicated." Such a great benefit _that_ had proved all his life.

"House," Nolan started, feeling his way through the words he chose, "you have choices now. That's...part what it means to be an outpatient. You can leave. You know Wilson would have you."

House shrugged. "Wilson would have a ghost."

"_That_ is an excuse. You can't help Wilson's problem, only yours."

"Wilson could make it my problem." House dropped down into the seat across from Nolan, elbows akimbo on the armrests. He stared across at him, waiting--still waiting, after months--for him to flinch.

"You haven't given him that chance."

House turned his head, blinking slowly at the sunlight coming through Nolan's office window. Sunshowers interspersed with bright lofty cumulus clouds. He wanted his license back. A day like today, he'd ditch work and take the bike out, along Skyline Drive, instead of taking buses with bad shocks to his mandated shrink visits. He'd been giving people chances all summer. Lydia, Alvie. Foreman. Gave him the chance to be the same bastard he'd always been, and Foreman had changed on him. House was supposed to trust that? He was tired of giving people chances, and tired of Nolan's determination for him to change.

Nobody changed. Not him, and not Foreman, and not Thirteen. She finished her recitation of the symptoms and tests of their latest patient--theirs, not his--and House nodded. "You're an idiot," he said.

Thirteen stared at him. "Thanks," she said dryly. "Does that mean you know what he has?"

"No. You know what Foreman's like. If you were ignoring it before, it was no different than not getting your Huntington's test. Pretending it doesn't matter when you know it does."

"Right," she said, nodding along as if she was listening to him so fucking deeply instead of blowing him off. "That's great." She stood up and headed for the door. She opened it and leaned against it. "Just one thing. Are we talking about me, or about you, House?" She raised her eyebrows and left him with that, the door shutting firmly behind her.

* * *

Frustration eating a hole through his patience, Foreman waited for Remy answered his knock. He'd told Taub to do the shunt, and when Remy hadn't shown up, he'd assumed she'd stayed at the hospital. The last thing he'd expected was to find her at home, casually answering the door as if she hadn't just stood him up. "Our reservations were for seven," he said, tilting his head and waiting for whatever explanation she wanted to give for blowing him off _again_.

"So I wasn't interested in dinner." She left the door open and walked back to her couch, curling up in one corner.

Closing the door behind himself, Foreman followed her. From the coffee table, he picked up one Thai take-out container between his thumb and forefinger and showed it to her, the chopsticks still poking out the top. "Not hungry?"

She lifted her chin, meeting his challenge without a damn hint of remorse. "Not _interested_."

Sighing, Foreman sat in the arm chair and steepled his hands together. "It wasn't enough that you couldn't back me up in front of the patient today--"

"Don't talk to me about work."

"Then what do you want to talk about?" Foreman's control narrowed, until it felt like he'd walked from a bridge to a tightrope, dangled over every last thing that had pissed him off in the last twenty-four hours. "If how close I am to being fired doesn't interest you, then how about we talk about House? And whatever the hell you told him."

Remy's mouth fell open. "What do you mean?"

"He knows." Foreman pushed out of the chair. No matter how much room Remy's apartment had, he felt like he had nowhere to move. He'd wormed his first case out of Cuddy, only to lose his temper in front of the patient, nearly losing his chance at making the diagnosis. Now he was competing with every conspiracy nut on the internet, Remy had ditched him for take-out, and every worst fear he'd had about House snooping through his stuff had turned out to be not half as bad as the reality. He didn't even know why the fact that House had turned out to be an even bigger bigoted asshole upset him. It wasn't a surprise. He'd expected the mockery. He'd never wanted to scare House into behaving--as apparently he had for the last five days--by the threat of having a guy who liked cock sleeping within twenty feet and two unlocked doors of him. "He figured it out."

"Yeah. Got that," Remy snapped. "Trying to move on to the implications."

"I'm not blaming you," Foreman started. Not that he was going to say, anyway. It'd been his own fault not to get that magazine out of his place before House could find it. Remy had been the one to invite House into his home, with some motive of testing what he'd be like as her caregiver, and that was not fucking fair, but it had nothing to do with House's reaction.

Remy's eyes widened and she cut him short, saying flatly, "Did something happen?"

"You think I'd do anything with _House_? He's not--"

"Takes one to know one, right, Eric?" She grabbed the take-out containers off the table, all but flinging herself into movement, stalking into the kitchen and slamming the lid of the trash can. "He figured out I was bi after you did. I don't think you have the moral high ground on letting House know about other people's sexual preferences!"

Christ, the way she was acting, it was like she _had_ spilled every last secret Foreman had ever told her into House's eager ears. All he'd wanted was some damn consideration. It had been a miserable day, in every possible way, and he couldn't even get some sympathy from his girlfriend. "No," Foreman said shortly. "Nothing happened."

"But something might have."

"He was in pain!"

"And you--"

Foreman snorted, disgusted. He never would've gotten within arm's length of House if he hadn't been doing it for her. "I tried to _care_. Isn't that what you wanted?"

Remy crossed her arms, her eyes cold as glacier melt. "Not for him."

Foreman all but gaped at her. That was the furthest thing from reality that he could imagine, and she flung it at him like she had proof that he'd fucked House ten ways from Sunday. The acid boil of unfairness rose up and burst out of him. "You wanted me to change who I am, how I deal with my life, so that I could take care of you. But you didn't want me to practice on House, even though that's why you tried to dump him in my lap in the first place, as a fucking practice run."

"That's _not_ what it was!" Remy's indignant anger matched his

"You were testing me," Foreman insisted. "You didn't trust me."

Remy tipped her head back, rolling her eyes at the ceiling. "Well, it turns out you weren't trustworthy!"

"Remy--" Foreman stopped and shut his mouth, pressing his lips together. "I would have done it for you," he said, staring at her and willing her to believe him. No practice run meant anything, not when the truth would've come in his actions. _When_ they were necessary. "I would have been there."

"I thought you couldn't promise that," she said, her voice cutting. "I thought you couldn't look that far in the future."

"Nothing's a hundred percent," he said. "If that's what you need-- You're never going to get that, you're never going to find it! It's impossible!"

"That's what I thought. Foreman--" He caught her slip the same moment she did. It had always been Eric, whenever they were alone. She swallowed, and said, "I don't want you to take care of me."

The heat of his anger collapsed on itself, and Foreman let his arms fall, loose and limp. "That's--what you said you wanted."

"You suck at taking care of people," she said, spacing out her words as if he'd miss the point otherwise. "I told you what I was worried about and the first thing you did was come in here to yell at me about what you think I told House. Well, I didn't tell him anything, he figured it out. You knew he would, eventually. But you didn't even apologize to me! You didn't even recognize what I needed. So no, I don't want you taking care of me."

Foreman scowled down at the floor, and then looked up at her, but he couldn't read her. The words scraped his throat getting out. "For now..."

"For now, nearly live with you every day and pretend like we don't know that someday we're going to break up because you're a jerk to your patients?"

"You'd never be my patient."

"Yes, I would." Tiredly, she leaned her shoulder against the kitchen door frame, crossing her arms. She didn't meet his eyes. "That's the only way you know how to deal."

Foreman shook his head, more at himself than her, trying to get rid of his dad's voice. _I can ask the doctor those questions if I need to, Eric. What I need from you is to help take care of your mother. I need you to be there._ "I can--"

"You could try. But you'd end up like you are now. And I'd still be dying, and you'd never _notice_. I'd be your patient, not your girlfriend. And don't tell me that things aren't already too complicated. I'm your girlfriend and you're my boss and that's already too much."

"It's one case."

Remy lifted an eyebrow. "You want to be right, even when you're not. I know you."

"I listen," he insisted. He'd never disregarded her opinion. They'd only had one case so far, and he'd taken her suggestions as often as he'd taken Taub's, or gone with his own gut instinct. The only line he'd drawn was that she didn't contradict him in front of the patient--which she had. Broken down his air of confidence and certainty, opened him up to jokes from the man who needed them to figure out what was wrong with him.

"You put your career first," Remy said. "It's exactly the same. You'd make it about you, the same way you did about House staying with you." "You still don't get it. It's about him."

God, he fucking hated that it always came back to House. Five _days_ and he'd managed to ruin Foreman's life. Nothing so petty as cancelling his job interviews or rearranging his books, no, this time he'd gone for what mattered, cutting down anyone who should have supported _Foreman_. "I can't believe you're on his side," he said, not even trying to hold back his bitterness.

Remy laughed incredulously. "I can't believe you think there are sides!" She stepped forward, touching his bicep. Trying to comfort him. Beaten, Foreman met her eyes, silently asking her not to do this. "Foreman," she said. "It's over."

"Because of House."

"Because of you. Because of me." She shrugged, squeezed his arm, and let go. "I need you to go now."

Head lowered, Foreman nodded. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, shoulders hunching as he left her building behind.

* * *

House turned the pill bottle over and over again, working it across his knuckles like a magician's coin. The weight, the click-slide of the pills, the ridged white plastic of the child-proof cap, felt so familiar that he could almost taste the chalk-acid taste of a dry-swallowed Vicodin at the back of his throat, the flood of relief hitting his bloodstream before the hydrocodone possibly could. He used to play with the Vicodin, fighting--or pretending to fight--the temptation to take a second pill that would turn the knife-edge of pain with its warm buzz. This bottle was translucent blue, not orange, but the label had the enticing letters PRN stamped next to his name.

It held fifteen capsules of gabapentin. House watched them fall end over end. He hated the stuff. After the myectomy, when he'd yanked his nasal canula off his face and snapped to the next nurse he saw that he could manage his own fucking bowel movements from then on, and called Stacy to roll him out of the hospital in a wheelchair, it'd been his doctor's idea of a weaning drug for the morphine. House had spent three weeks bent over a toilet bowl, abs convulsing, exhausted, throat burning with bile, with his leg screaming from the kneeling and the pull of half-healed stitches. He'd screamed until his voice was bloody and ragged, at Stacy, at his doctor, at the home-care nurse, until finally Stacy, in tears, had dragged his ass in to that fucking quack to get him something--anything--different. They'd gone back and forth for what felt like hours, over side-effects and habituation, but when Stacy had rolled him out, it'd been with his first scrip for Vicodin in her purse.

"For breakthrough pain," Nolan said, his pen scratching across his pad. House watched his fingers, the slightest blanching of his nailbeds as he held the pen. His swallow scraped what little spit he had down his throat. It wasn't like the fucking naproxen, or the resentful obligation of the antidepressants. Gabapentin wasn't a narcotic, but it could be abused. House knew all the ways. "That's what we do," Nolan said, tearing the scrip from his pad and handing it over. "If what you're using isn't working, then we try something else."

"I've been through this before," House reminded him. "I'll puke up my guts."

"You weren't taking the antidepressants before." Nolan made a note in House's file. "I'll give you an anti-emetic as well. I'm guessing your tolerance for nausea has increased over the years."

House snatched the second scrip too. "You're basing this on my tolerance for nausea? Comforting."

"Pain management is a process. If you're committed--" Nolan's mouth twitched into a hint of a smile. "Then we'll find a combination that works." He sat back, tucking his pad away. "I'm trusting you, House. At least that you don't _want_ to puke up your guts. Keep a record of when you use them, and then we can discuss refills."

House limped to the window. He didn't need the pills this morning, anyway. Nolan had slotted him in between appointments when he'd shown up, and although someone had to be waiting, Nolan didn't make any move to usher him to the door. "I solved their case," he said, watching a flock of pigeons crap their way across the grounds.

He'd never caught Nolan by complete surprise, but that came close. House twisted his shoulders to see Nolan's blink. Somehow it wasn't as satisfying as it should have been. "Your old team's case?"

House shrugged agreement. "The patient put his symptoms up on the internet," he said. "And Thirteen told me some details."

"And...how do you feel?"

House snorted. "You're not usually that transparent."

"Better?" Nolan prodded.

"Yeah," House said, roughly, pissed off at his own superstition that saying it would shatter the moment. "No pain today. A one."

"Then..." Nolan opened his hands. "Maybe I was wrong."

"Again, reassuring."

"I'm not perfect, House. When I'm wrong, we change something."

There were still fifteen pills in bottle. House had stripped down and filled Foreman's bath with water as hot as he could stand, and groaned settling in, falling asleep with his arms propped on the rim of the tub. He'd woken up with the water luke-warm, his body dulled by the heat and exhaustion into obeying him, and pulled himself out again. He took a naproxen, his first of the day, to keep himself from stiffening up.

Dressing was easy. Clean shorts, his pyjama pants grabbed still hot from Foreman's dryer, and t-shirt so old that the cotton felt like a warm second skin. House lingered over the feel of fabric. Elastic at his waist, the drift of his pant cuffs over his bare feet. Felt damn good. He took out his electric razor and trimmed his beard, too, cutting it back to a raspy stubble.

There was nothing he cared about on TV, and Foreman had reprogrammed his TiVo back to boring shit, Vietnam War documentaries and the history of feudal Russia. Jesus. House stretched out on the couch anyway, tugging the quilt up to his chest. He slipped in and out of sleep, nose pressed into one of the pillows that smelled like Foreman. Like Foreman's car and Foreman's cologne and Foreman's aftershave. He'd solved the case right under Foreman's nose. Warm. Good. Like Foreman's hand, the careful touch of his fingers on House's thigh. Thirteen would ditch him. Foreman deserved it, the fucker. For liking men. Changing when House wasn't looking.

Lydia smiled at him, her hand firm against his chest as she kissed him. Her hand wandered under the blanket. Why bother with more than pyjamas? He didn't need to dress up for anything. Nothing Foreman wanted from him. He was comfortable, half asleep and wanting. Like something he'd forgotten and just now remembered. Fucking side effects. He wasn't hard, but he knew he could get there. Foreman's magazine was under the couch cushions. House blinked his eyes open, checked the clock on the cablebox, and bent his arm to grab it. Under the quilt, he pushed his pyjamas and his boxers down just far enough to wrap his hand around his dick, paging left-handed through the magazine. The page with the blowjob was more crinkled than any of the others, and House studied it, wondering what about it got Foreman off. He probably loved getting sucked like that. House stroked himself idly, not trying to get anywhere, just enjoying himself.

The door opened.

House froze, stuffing the magazine into the crack at the back of the couch. _Fuck_. He was a moron. What the hell had been thinking? Too damn lazy to even haul his ass back to Foreman's bedroom and shut the fucking door. Maybe Foreman would be in one of his sulks and walk right by.

Foreman had never in his life done the convenient thing. Predictable, yes, but never convenient. Keys. Shoes. Coat. He eyed House from across the room, but he wouldn't see anything. It wasn't that obvious.

Then House looked down and realized that it was. Face flaming, he glared at Foreman, daring him to comment. Foreman's stuffed-shirt face was about the most insufferable thing he'd ever seen, made all the worse by the fact that he looked like he'd never seen a hard-on before, and he'd never wanted to. "What the fuck are you doing?"

For fuck's sake, did he want a detailed description? "Nothing," House lied, since Foreman was determined to be oblivious.

He'd expected Foreman to get so angry that his eyes would bulge out of his head. Instead, Foreman just looked his usual amount of pissed off, with a whiff of impatience. "I have a _bathroom_, House."

House squinted at him, but there was no time to debate whether Foreman had actually just encouraged him to beat off in his bathroom. It was almost like he thought masturbation wasn't the devil's own tool. He shot back, "Oh, right, because porcelain fixtures or _standing up_ were going to help me."

"The doors lock," Foreman said in a snitty tone. He stripped off his suit jacket and hung it in the closet with his coat, and then wandered into the kitchen, like that was the extent of the problem. He wasn't even going to _fight_.

House shrugged angrily and reached for his cane. That was great to remember when the front door was already swinging open, but he wasn't going to admit that he'd been feeling so good that he hadn't _thought_, and make himself look like even more of an idiot than he already was. Scattering the pillows and blankets off the couch, he surged to his feet. Some part of his brain warned him not to move too fast, a twinge making itself felt in his leg, but House didn't care. He grabbed Foreman's stupid fucking magazine out of the couch and stalked to the kitchen. "Can't believe you use the bathroom when you keep this in your _recycling_," he said, waving the magazine, wanting nothing more than to throw it in Foreman's face. His dick was already softening, humiliation ripping through the easy heat of the bath and the slow, aimless jerkoff. "I'd think you did it right here. Not very sanitary. Or are you just that closeted?"

Foreman's eyes widened, the whites showing as he snapped his hand out and ripped the magazine from House's hand. He crumpled it in his hand and threw it down on the counter, breathing hard and staring at House like he'd grown a second head. "_That's_ what you were getting off to?"

_Fuck_. House's heart slammed against his ribs, and he couldn't help the quick blanking of his expression, before his anger came pouring back. "It's not what _I_ like, it's you hiding who the fuck you are--"

"Yeah, I don't shove my porn in anyone's face," Foreman said. "I don't bring it into the office. I don't go _looking_ for it in someone else's home. That doesn't make me a closet case, it makes me someone with a fucking _private life_."

House twisted his cane tip into the linoleum to turn away, then stamping back toward Foreman, one finger stabbing out to point at him. "You can't admit you like this!"

"What, exactly? Having you _here_? Having you treat my relationship like your dinner and a show?" Foreman crossed his arms, his biceps flexing. Probably stopping himself from punching House in the jaw, because he never could _act_ when he was pissed off, he always had to take the fucking moral high ground and put on his holier-than-thou act. "Remy dumped me," he said. "Does that help? Can you pretend your life isn't a disaster a little better now that you've wrecked mine?"

"Oh, don't change the subject," House said. He'd bulled his way forward into this fucking mess, but Foreman was acting like a self-righteous shit. Thirteen had been looking for a way out; House hadn't told her what to do. "You're pissed off because I found something that actually _matters_."

He pushed forward, throwing himself into Foreman's space without checking his momentum. Foreman wouldn't let him fall. He did stagger backwards a step, but by then House had a hand fisted in the front of his shirt, crushing it into wrinkles, and he was leaning down--taller, not as heavy as Foreman but on top and using it--and he was kissing him, short and jerky and violent. Even kissing that hard, Foreman's mouth was soft, and House licked across his bottom lip. His beard prickled House's lips. He inhaled harshly, and House caught the hot wet taste of his tongue for a fleeting second before he wrenched back. Foreman's eyes were burning black, stunned and wary meeting his. This close, House could see the ring of his irises against the pupils; they were dilated. House flicked his gaze across Foreman's face, counting his breaths and the glimmer of his pulse. He'd liked it. "Get your head out of your ass," House said. "Life is fucking messy."

"Is that what you were trying to prove?" Foreman said, his voice rough. He shrugged, pushing House back a step. "Because I think all you proved is that _you_ like guys."

House rolled his eyes and shoved off Foreman's chest. Foreman had reacted. House had broken him down, enough to see the scared desire underneath all his moronic posturing. He didn't need to take this any further. "Porn is porn," he said, turning on his heel. He'd drag on his clothes and go to Wilson's place. Foreman was right. If he'd broken up with Thirteen, then the show was over. House wasn't interested in watching him sulk over his documentaries and a pint of ice cream.

"The _Playboy_ didn't do anything for you?" Foreman insisted behind him. Smug satisfaction infused his voice. House glanced over his shoulder, swallowing as he took Foreman in. His tie was tugged loose, his shirt a mess, and all the confidence House had rammed through was back, doubled in his smirk. He stepped forward slowly, as if he knew he wouldn't have to corner House to get what he wanted. "You'd rather think about sucking cock?"

"Getting sucked," House said, trying to work up a sneer. _Playboy_ was too damn tame. Besides, he'd given one to Wilson--Foreman would probably have an aneurism if House told him _that_\--and Foreman had recycled the other. "Doesn't matter whose mouth it is."

Foreman snorted. "It matters to most people, House."

House lifted his chin, staring Foreman down. Whatever had possessed him to kiss Foreman in the first place deserted him, but Foreman was already stepping towards him, pushing him back towards the couch, and the mound of appropriated cushions and blankets. Before House knew what was happening, Foreman shoved him down, his hand sneaking under the thin pyjama pants. House's mouth fell open. He was panting already, feeling the warmth of Foreman's palm like something new, as if he'd never been touched before. He hadn't thought--hadn't thought about how long it'd been--

"You don't like this?" Foreman asked, his voice dark and amused, as House gasped and twitched up. "Really? You're not enjoying this?"

Grabbing control of his voice long enough to speak, House gritted out, "Would you shut up? I can't imagine the porn over the sound of your ego."

Foreman laughed softly, slowing down until the tight grip of his fingers was torture, completely perfect, working House until he was hard and needy and desperate. "My ego's not what's getting stroked."

House grunted, and thrust up shamelessly. He'd been closer than he'd thought before, and without the barrier of the pain, everything was happening faster and easier than he could have known. His orgasm shot through him with the same fierce burn of the time he'd shoved a knife into an electrical socket, and he jerked hard against Foreman's hand and his body, semen spurting over his t-shirt and stomach.

Foreman kept going, until House shook his head and fell back limply against the couch. He wiped his hand on House's shirt, palming his chest briefly through the material. "Guess you didn't prove all that much," he taunted.

House scowled, and with a half-turn, pinned Foreman against the couch with his weight, his palm pressing hard against Foreman's crotch. Foreman's eyes widened, a short, cut-off moan sounding from his chest. "Then why are you hard?" House asked, working him through his pants. They'd have to get dry-cleaned, if the damp spot under the heel of his hand meant anything. He'd been twisting for Foreman long enough, and repaying him--nothing elaborate, just the taunting patience of already being satisfied himself--kept him from letting Foreman come. He studied Foreman's face, the twitch of his expression as House played his hand along his cock, quick and then pulling back, light and then fast and strong.

Foreman took it in silence until he'd backed off one time too many, and then he groaned hard. "Fuck--House--"

His name, torn out of Foreman's throat, made House tighten his hand and lengthen his strokes, and a second later, Foreman was clutching at him, hauling him close and rubbing off against him, his stomach, his hand, his hip. Panting, House watched him, _making_ him come, until Foreman collapsed with a stupid, happy look on his face. He lay back against the couch, not even bothering about the fact that they'd both just come all over Foreman's precious living room furniture. House snorted and sat back, the two of them side-by-side and breathing lightly.

Foreman chuckled when he finally reached to pull his pants together. "You know, that's great, House, but it still doesn't mean anything." He tangled his fingers in House's hair and kissed him, slow and thorough, sucking on House's tongue until he felt dizzy. He pulled back, and raised an eyebrow, not waiting for House's answer. "Because you don't care, right?"

* * *

House glared up the stairs in front of Wilson's building, his cane tip set on the first one. He'd climbed them before, with Vicodin cushioning him from the consequences. When Wilson had been pretending that quitting his job would bring Amber back as some sort of flesh-eating zombie, anger had spurred House to the top of the flight. Intent on dragging something like the truth out of Wilson, or apologizing, or both, all he'd felt was the driving burn of everyday pain. Whatever he'd wanted from Wilson, he hadn't gotten it, and coming down he'd counted every step, cold and aching.

The pain was quiet today. Blinking awake to Foreman's office ceiling, his feet blocks of ice from hanging over the edge of the sofabed all night, House had expected the first throbbing jar to hit him as soon as he rolled to his side and tried to sit. It didn't come, but he still felt empty and sick, his stomach heavy under his ribs. He'd laid out his pills, three different capsules from three different bottles, and swallowed them even though it was pointless. They were working for now, but there'd come a day, or a week, or a fucking month when the pain caged him, weighing him down with chains. When he couldn't manage a step, let alone a damn staircase just to get home.

Today he could manage. One after the other, his cane and the railing both giving him leverage to haul himself up by his arms as much as anything else. Slow, face locked in a snarl, and humiliating if anyone had seen, or worse, offered to help. It was midmorning, though, and no one got it into their head to work on their karma by pandering to the cripple. House got to the top eventually and buzzed Wilson's number.

"Hello?"

"Let me in." House knocked on the apartment window with his cane tip to drive his point home.

There was a pause--House pictured Wilson's resigned sigh--and the door buzzed under his hand. House pushed his way into the hallway. Wilson was already at the apartment door, opening it for him. "House?"

"I'm moving in with you," House said. He aimed his most stubborn expression at Wilson, daring him to deny House after Wilson had all but begged him to move in.

Wilson's eyebrows rose. With a ridiculous theatrical gesture that probably translated as _mi dead girlfriend's casa es su casa_, he ushered House in. House stalked in, peering around the corners, gritting his teeth against the cringing urge to look for Amber. Behind him, beside him, suddenly turning the bit basket chair and laughing at him for ever believing that three months in Mayfield meant anything.

"This is...different," Wilson said, closing the door tidily and following behind House, following the direction of his gaze as if he might catch a glimpse of Amber, too, if he only looked hard enough.

House shrugged. He checked the kitchen before sitting down at Wilson's--Amber's--dining room table. "You have an extra room and you wanted to check up on me," he said. There'd be a list of promises Wilson would extract from him. House might even follow them. For a while. "Need me to pee in a cup before you'll give me a key?"

Wilson stared at him, astonishment crossing his face before an abrupt anger tightened his lips. "Oh, that's rich," he said. "I asked you to move in two _weeks_ ago." His mouth set in a grim line, he glared at House, disappointment and impatience battling it out until finally his fury won. "You didn't even tell me you'd been discharged, House! I would have come to pick you up, but you took the bus. To Foreman's place! Why are you here now?"

"I got what I wanted." He'd gotten fucked. Just not physically. Foreman had ignored him, then pitied him, then used him. _Trust people_\--such bullshit advice. Wilson was the one so committed to the fucking _process_. He should love a chance to prove, to himself if not to House, that he hadn't failed because he hadn't seen House's breakdown coming. He wanted to help, so House would pay the price and let him. "I haven't relapsed and you know better than to enable me." House stared back, biting down his rebellious, pointed tirade. "Put a bed in your office."

Wilson gaped at him, and then he snapped his mouth shut, his eyebrows drawing together. "No."

The word hit him like a heavy weight shoved against his chest, sending him sitting down heavily. The payphones in Mayfield were in the most public spot the doctors could devise, the tile echoing all day with patients, nurses, orderlies, cleaning staff. At night, it echoed silence, and the air conditioning blasted cold straight down from one end to the other, so that House had stood there shivering, with Wilson's anguished _I can't_ shimmering like a sound artefact down the line. House dropped his gaze and tapped his fingers against the table. "You're not saying no," he said. "You just want me to jump through some hoops. Fine, I'll take the couch."

"House--" Wilson took two pacing steps away, one hand scrubbing his face and then pushing through his hair to squeeze at the back of his neck. "You moved in with Foreman because you thought it would be easier," he said, meeting House's glance cautiously, like he was testing the truth of his theory at the same time that he was working it out. "Because you didn't care about him. And now...it's more difficult than you thought. You're just escaping again." Anger darkened his eyes. "You think you know how to get around me."

House set his jaw and glared back. "Oh, the lecturing. I knew there was a reason I didn't decide to move in with you--"

"That's it!" Wilson waved a hand in the air, but whether he was illustrating his point or suffering from a peripheral tremor wasn't exactly clear. "I'm sorry, House. Go deal with Foreman. Whatever you did to him--deal with it."

Wilson thought he knew so much. Thought he understood House. _Whatever you did to him_\--as if that included pushing Foreman back against his own couch, wrapping a hand around his erection, squeezing and stroking, watching Foreman lick his lips, moan and arch against him. For him. "I had sex with him," he said, meeting Wilson's eyes and only letting a tinge of sarcasm into his voice. "What exactly does _deal with it_ mean then?"

Wilson let out an impatient sigh. He pulled out a chair and sat across from House, looking at him flatly. "Right. Or you could apologize for clogging his sinks and ruining his furniture. I hear that works, too."

Nolan had wanted him to tell. Wilson wanted every confession to be full of maximum drama, and when it wasn't, he passed it by. They'd done fine for years without Wilson knowing. It'd be better if he just kept thinking that House was joking. House stared sullenly at the table. "Fine."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Wilson raised his hands, stopping him short. "That's not fine. You're not going to apologize. You--"

House darted a quick glance at him, waiting for the truth to hit him smack between his eyes. Wilson's face contorted, shock and denial wavering in nearly equal amounts. Ribs tightening around his lungs, House muttered, "Being the boy who cries wolf at the end of the story sucks."

Wilson blinked, opened his mouth, shut it to swallow, and then opened it again. "Are you really...? And Foreman...?"

Yeah, this was about the coming-out reaction House had expected. Goddamn Nolan, anyway. House would never be able to keep Wilson on track anymore; he'd be too busy coming up with new theories to encapsulate every action House had ever taken. "If you don't want me living here--"

"I didn't say that!"

"Then you should've chosen a word more ambiguous than _no_."

"I said, deal with Foreman first." Wilson slumped back, his eyes sad, corners of his mouth turned down in something like anger. "You said I'm not enabling you anymore. Well, I'm not enabling you to move around every time the person whose home you've invaded is finally fed up with you." He sighed, finally letting House out of the spotlight of his stare. "House, what happened?"

House clamped his mouth shut. Wilson didn't deserve to know, and if he thought House would be _begging_ to move in with him if he had anything to _brag_ about, then it wasn't just direct statements he was having trouble picking up on today. "Nothing," he said in a sneering taunt.

Wilson let the gauntlet fall with a tired sigh. "House, you need to show that you can handle a human relationship with someone you _don't_ like before you can manage one with me." He shrugged, massaging his thumb and forefinger against his nose. "I think that's what you were trying to do. Ease back in."

"Right, it's secretly all about my pining for you."

"I didn't say you were pining! I said if we're friends--" Wilson peered at him, dropping his hand to the table. "Wait, you're _not_ pining, are you? Because, House--"

"You're straight. I know." House shook his head, irritated. "I don't want to jump you, Wilson."

Wilson nodded. With an obvious physical effort, he held back from letting a thousand other questions spill out, although House was sure that they'd be there, waiting, the second he looked like he might be the least bit forthcoming. "I know you're working on it," he said, "but you were right. You haven't changed. And I can't let you stay here until you do."

"You haven't changed," House said. He was too annoyed not to push. "Why should I?"

Wilson threw up his hands in exasperation. "Because you were institutionalized!"

"Oh, like you don't OD on caring?" House slapped his hand down on the table. "Look in the mirror, Wilson! You haven't moved on. I killed your girlfriend and you haven't gotten better. At least I know it! I'm fucking terrified of seeing her again and you want to drag her back in here! If you could hallucinate her you'd never want to get better!"

Eyes dark, mouth set and angry, Wilson let every word about Amber wash over him without rising to the bait. "House, this isn't _about_ me."

"It's about you because it's about me! We're friends. Or has that changed again? Should I expect you to say no when I need some fucking support?"

Wilson let out a barking laugh. House grimaced, hating himself for _asking for help_, and Wilson for asking, clearly and openly, "What support do you need, exactly?"

"Moving in." It was hopeless; Wilson had drawn the line, and he wasn't backing down. It felt like something pressing on House's skin, on every inch at once, with the same even pressure. All he could do was fight it, fight not to be seen, to have Wilson scalpel him open and examine every motivation. With every refusal, the pressure increased, the knowledge that Wilson knew him. Knew what he needed. He was being held down, held in place, and if he didn't struggle, he wouldn't know if he was safe.

Wilson smiled helplessly. "House, right now I...I have too many stairs for you."

It wasn't enough that Wilson wrapped him up, or how firm the bonds felt. House was still dangling over the edge of a canyon, and whatever else Wilson could give him, he couldn't see that. "You're telling me to save myself."

Slowly, Wilson nodded. "I'm asking for some time."

House jerked his head. He braced himself and stood up, leaving Wilson sitting at the table. No matter how Wilson wanted to phrase it, he was telling House to go live with Foreman. Go deal with it. Build a human relationship. The implications knotted around the words: _you'll be happier if you're with somebody_. Wilson's snake-oil cure-all. Whether he was pushing House at Cuddy or at Foreman, the message was the same.

Making his way down the stairs, a smile touched House's face. He supposed it was worth something that bi or straight, Wilson still saw all his problems exactly the same.

* * *

Sunlight streaming through the window and the hiss of blinds opening jolted House out of an uneasy sleep. His office recliner wasn't as comfortable when he couldn't rely on the drugs to let him nap through the ass-numbing. He shifted his weight, grunting against the mild protest in his leg, reached into his pocket, and remembered. Put off his routine and willing to blame it on whoever happened to be around, he squinted at Thirteen as she propped the balcony door open. "Isn't there some commandment against waking up defenceless cripples?"

Thirteen wrinkled her nose and let her voice fall into a low, confiding register. "I dropped out of Sunday school." She pulled the visitor's chair around to face him and sat down. "I didn't expect to find you here."

"But you had no problem disturbing me once you did." House slumped back in his recliner and looked sourly at Thirteen. "I can get my accreditation if I work a hundred and thirty hours."

Thirteen glanced around the office, nodding as if she was impressed with his industriousness. Or wondering when this career path would result in her being able to sleep through accreditation. "This is you working a hundred and thirty hours?"

"Dr Singh that this was the best way," House said.

Thirteen raised her eyebrows. "I guess I can see why."

The nap hadn't dented his exhaustion, and at the same time, House was so tired that sleeping sitting upright in his recliner felt like the only possible solution. He took a deep breath, letting his chin sink down on his chest, and crossed his hands across his stomach. "I slept with your boyfriend."

"I know."

House let his head fall back, blowing out an aggravated breath. He fiddled with his cane, resentment burning through him. Foreman wasn't stupid enough to go around blabbing in some petty attempt at revenge. His paltry secret wasn't worth what House would do if he was spreading the news that they'd traded handjobs last night. "Did he tell you?"

"I know what he looks like after sex," Thirteen said, and then gave him a conspiratorial smirk. "Was it good?"

It'd been his first orgasm in a month; of course it was _good_. That didn't mean it was anything special. Just sex. House didn't have any complaints about coming. Foreman had groaned, mouthing _fuck, yeah, House_ as his cock had spurted under House's fast-moving hand, and that didn't mean anything either. House was twenty years older than Thirteen. He couldn't take three unsupported steps let alone arch into a dozen different yoga poses. All sex was good; that was the point. Slinking away afterwards was the price. Foreman had remembered that he despised House and everything he stood for. His girlfriend was a better lay; she could fuck him without waiting for the stars to align and the drugs, side effects, and pain to give way and let him get hard. With a blink, House slid his gaze away from Thirteen's.

"Oh my god, it was." Thirteen broke into a wide-eyed smile that looked more like she was plotting a dozen different torture routines. "We broke up. Well." She tipped her head back, and House didn't need the words to hear _you know what Foreman's like_. "I broke up with him."

Why?

"You were right." She gave him a second to enjoy hearing that. "He wasn't ready to take care of me."

House grimaced. "Why the hell did you send him to take care of _me_?"

You don't want him to.

House glared.

"It wasn't going to work. Foreman as the boss." She leaned against the back of the chair, leaning back to send a glance into the conference room. "Are you coming back?"

"Yeah."

"I'll tell Cuddy I'm not resigning." She stood up, tracing her fingers over his desk, and picked up his tennis ball from its dish. "He puts his career first, he doesn't care about people. He's a big fucking jerk. But when he wants you..."

House's throat closed. _Pity_, he insisted. _It was one time, a pity fuck. Foreman doesn't give a shit._ "What?" he snapped.

Thirteen tossed the tennis ball to him. "He doesn't take no for an answer."

"Should I be scared of the bad touch?"

"No. I mean..." She pushed her hair back, focusing on something past the walls as she groped for words. "He shows it. He gets sulky about it."

House rolled his eyes. No kidding. Find a situation when Foreman _didn't_ get pissy and you'd have Stockholm knocking on your door. He turned the ball in his hands, rubbing his fingertips across the fuzzy surface.

Thirteen grinned at his pique. "I think it's cute. If he starts giving you soulful little looks, then you know he liked it too."

House shrugged and whipped the ball at the wall, catching it on the rebound. "He doesn't like me. In case you were keeping score, Wilson has you beat at completely ineffectual relationship advice."

"I think he doesn't like _living_ with you."

"And that's different how, exactly?"

Thirteen laughed. "You're all he talks about! You're the most important thing in his life, even if he hates you." She stepped in front of him and blocked his next throw, until he looked up and met her eyes. "You being you, I expect that's what you like."

House cocked his arm again and threw the ball anyway, but she was too quick to let it hit her. She caught it instead. Probably she'd been on some girls' softball team. The kind with long, sensuous locker room showers after every game. House focused on that instead of actively working to fool himself about the nature of reality. He'd spent the summer getting over his last set of hallucinations, and those hadn't even involved _actually_ sleeping with a co-worker. "Foreman doesn't want anything to do with me. You can stop trying to spare my feelings. Because there aren't any."

Thirteen cocked her head, believing that about as much as Nolan ever did. "He probably thinks that if you made a move, it's because you're serious."

"I'm never serious."

"Foreman knows you."

"Yeah, biblically." If House wanted this kind of semi-portentous better-yourself bullshit, he had his choice of Nolan or Wilson. "What the hell are you getting out of this? You just broke up with him."

"Foreman's not exactly the kind of guy to be jealous over."

House scoffed. "You're bored of Rocky Road," he said. "You're going back to bubblegum."

"All the colours of the rainbow." She looked at him significantly. "And you..."

He glared at her. "I'm napping. As soon as I get some peace and quiet."

"That's going to work out _so_ well for you," Thirteen said. "Hang in there." She stood up, punched him on the shoulder, and smirked at him over her shoulder as she sauntered out of his office.

* * *

Foreman smirked to himself before he opened his eyes. He was relaxed in a way that sleep alone couldn't touch. Satisfied. For once, he'd figured out what was going on in House's head before House had labelled his thoughts and sent them back at him in the barb of a joke. All of House's edged comments about fucking guys had been nothing more than his own brand of honesty, backhanded and obscure.

He sat up, yawned, and wandered into the bathroom without bothering to pull on clothes. House could fucking deal if he saw him; Foreman was done putting himself to any inconvenience for fear that House might see him naked. He chuckled as he turned on the spray. Too late for that.

The water was hot, and there hadn't been a sound from the rest of the apartment. Either House was sleeping, or gone. Foreman was sick of holding back on more than just clothes, and as easy as breathing, he let his left hand rub down his stomach to curl his fingers around his half-hard cock. It'd been possible that last night was all a set-up. House pushing him until he'd proved whatever stupid point he wanted to make. But Foreman had seen the glazed look of desperate desire in House's eyes. For _him_. Foreman had fisted him harder, then slower, just to see House's mouth fall open around his sharp panting, see his eyes close in greedy pleasure.

Stroking himself, Foreman leaned his right elbow against the tile, spreading his legs to get his balance. A low moan grew in the back of his throat. Couldn't believe he'd put this off a week, week and a half, just because House might hear him. Foreman wasn't worried about that now. There was no way this could last, but damn, it had felt good, the clever pull of House's fingertips, the tease. House's bottle of conditioner was perched on the rim of the tub. Foreman picked it up, poured some into his palm, and put it back. He spread it down his cock in one squeezing stroke, groaning quietly.

Remy...sex with her was amazing, explosive, fun. With House last night there'd been an edge to it that had always been softened by Remy's humour. It wasn't that sex with House had been _better_\--in fact, Foreman would bet that sex with House would consistently be worse. Infuriating, teasing, taunting, if it happened at all. If House was in too much pain, or his meds got in the way, he'd get nasty about it, more withdrawn. In fact, it would be frustrating as hell. Foreman sped his hand, his stomach tightening when one foot slipped underneath him. But it had been good. House's hand, the scrape of his teeth near Foreman's ear when he'd taunted him, the unrelenting weight of his body, had all driven Foreman forward. He wanted more--he wanted to find out what it was like to kiss House's mouth while his lips were slack with his orgasm. Wanted to taste every sound House made when he begged.

With a long, hot shudder, Foreman came against the tile, his hand speeding until the pleasure had peaked and faded. He washed slowly afterwards, soaping down thoroughly, and letting the water run hot over him until he could feel the beat of his pulse in his skin.

A glance at the clock sped him along when he got back to his bedroom. If House hadn't shown up yet, he must have snuck out already. Foreman grimaced for a moment, but he didn't let himself think about it. One time proved nothing.

Foreman had been thinking of Remy when he'd come home last night. Bitter with her words. Seeing House on the couch, perfectly comfortable beating off in Foreman's home, while he'd been dumped... Foreman could imagine Remy going out and picking up a woman, doing something crazy and wild, because she could. She'd have no trouble.

That wasn't an excuse. And it wasn't fair to House. But since House had never been fair to anyone, Foreman set his jaw and refused to care. House wouldn't want it. Any help Foreman offered would have to be pushed on House. He'd go to Wilson or to Cuddy if he was desperate. Anything Foreman did, he'd have to want to do, he'd have to want to do it badly enough to fight about it. If he didn't fight, then House wouldn't accept it. Foreman could only care for House if he wanted to. There was no expectation except his own desire.

It had been a while since he'd been with a guy, and it was almost a surprise to remember how he liked it. Normally he preferred women. He loved Remy's slight breasts, the smoothness of her stomach, the accommodating heat of her body. He loved her lips, her cheekbones, her eyes, her sharp elfin beauty. It was better, it was good, most of the time. He'd never have worried if no other guy ever turned him on. He just knew that some would.

And it wasn't a surprise that it was House. Foreman burned, fighting with him. That was easy. The quick release of frustration worked for him, raging over House and getting rid of that rage the easy way.

Foreman paused in front of the mirror when he'd dressed and watched his reflection while he tugged his wrist cuffs into place. Nothing to show last night had happened at all. Not even House, snapping at him and being a general irritant.

Foreman didn't care if House had run. He'd know if House wanted more if he came back. House might fight and yank on whatever cord was tying them together, but if he was there, then Foreman would only have to convince him. It might be the worst decision he'd ever made, but he'd enjoy making it. He'd already made it, the night before. Challenge House to finally put up or shut up. After work.

He'd find him.

* * *

Foreman fell back, mouth wide open, gasping. House grunted and shifted, for a second looking like he was going to crawl out of bed and flee as fast as one and half legs and his cane would carry him, but then he collapsed, only turning his head away from the pillow far enough to breathe. Since his eyes were closed, Foreman allowed himself a smug grin, watching House's back heave with his panting breaths. Not that he was much better, breathing quickly, his blood singing around his body, until he felt like the endorphins had flooded from his toes to his fingertips. He chuckled lightly. "That was good."

House's eyes snapped open, and the frown that Foreman had erased for all of two minutes slammed back into place. "You must have a pretty pathetic Richter scale," he said.

He was too content to argue, and settled for rolling his eyes. "I didn't say you'd ruined me for anyone else," he said. "I said it was good."

House grunted and turned to his side, looking away from him. Foreman let his eyes close, relaxing, body surfing the receding warm tide of his orgasm.

The bed dipped. Blankets rustled. Foreman grimaced and opened his eyes to see House pushing himself up, reaching over the side of the bed for his pants. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Walk of shame," House snapped. "Thought a stud like you might recognize it after all those conquests--"

"Knock it off, House." Foreman propped himself up on his elbow. "I said it was _good_." He blew out a breath, irritation seeping past the last of his afterglow. If House walked out, he wasn't going to walk back in, and Foreman wasn't interested in going to the trouble of chasing him down if he did. House always won against Cuddy in hide-and-seek when it was over nothing more than clinic hours. Foreman wasn't going to win when he wanted to have a serious talk about their fucking _relationship_. "Look, we'd be idiots not to give this a try," he said.

"If your definition of 'idiot' includes rational adults who already know this is never going to work." House yanked his shorts up his good leg and then lifted his right to ease them on.

Foreman let himself fall to his back. He locked his fingers behind his head, relaxing, tracking the cooling sweat across his body. If House wanted to leave, Foreman wasn't going to stop him. "Why'd you try to out me by outing yourself if you didn't mean for me to know?"

Jeans followed the boxers. House was suspiciously quiet while he fastened his belt. With his back to the bed, he muttered, "This won't work out."

Foreman half-shrugged. Fine, he'd been stupid to offer. Stupid to say anything. House probably had the perfect explanation for it: sex made everyone stupid. Foreman wasn't going to get worked up about it, though. House had been getting stupid right along with him. "Who says it has to?"

House stilled for a second, and then he said, roughly, "Right." Painfully, he bent to pick up his t-shirt.

Christ, he was impossible. Foreman was offering them both a realistic way out of this freakshow whenever they needed it. The way House reacted, what he'd heard was Foreman kicking him out of his life forever. Foreman swung his legs over the side of the bed and pushed himself up, glaring at House's back disappearing under the t-shirt. "House, you don't want someone to hang around. You like being miserable." House turned around at last, his eyes carefully empty. Pissed off, Foreman glared at him. House's blankness didn't fool him, not after he'd seen the kind of reactions that House couldn't hide. "You'd annoy me into dumping you just so you could pretend it was always gonna be that way."

House's mouth crooked downwards into a sneer. "Don't give me that bullshit. You don't care about me, you only care about yourself. And maybe your career." He stepped past Foreman to snatch his cane from where it had fallen against the end of the bed. "You'll care when people ask you at medical conferences why you're fucking me, and you'll care at Thanksgiving dinner. Anything more than sex would freak you out." Using the cane handle, he hooked his socks and sneakers across the floor

No matter how obnoxious House was being, even he couldn't keep up his glower when he was hauling on his socks and tying his shoelaces. Foreman sighed. House was right. Foreman didn't want to spend his life explaining to anyone what he saw in House, especially when he didn't know himself. He wanted to keep his private life his _private life_, and House would make that impossible. "You think I would've done any of this if I didn't want it? I didn't have to track you down, House."

House shook his head. Under the anger, brittle and snappish, whatever he was afraid of "Don't mistake humouring the cripple for making up for when you abandon your dying girlfriend."

"We broke up for a reason--"

"She dumped you," House said, cutting through his explanation. "And it wasn't over me. It was your own damn problems. We're not close so you're _safe_\--"

"Nothing is safe with you," Foreman snapped. "I wouldn't be safe sharing a bus ride with you, let alone my life! That doesn't mean I don't think it's worth it."

 House stopped in the doorway. "I'm your ticket out of Boring Town? Sorry if that doesn't thrill my heart."

"I was never boring," Foreman said. "And sleeping with you wouldn't make me interesting. Being willing to hang around? That might." He raised his eyebrows, meeting House's eyes where he stood on the threshold, and, without expecting anything, he shrugged. "I'm just asking you to trust me."

* * *

"I hear congratulations are in order," Wilson said, coming into House's office, which was once again House's office.

House ducked his head in an abortive nod, though he kept his eyes trained on the high blue October sky. "Paperwork's filed. Next thing you know, I'll be a real doctor again."

Wilson took a few more steps into the room, about as casual as James Bond undercover in Octopussy's lair. "How does Foreman feel about that?"

"Don't know. Don't care."

Wilson nodded slowly. "Fair enough."

House looked over his shoulder. "Not going to defend his feelings because I've had sex with him?"

"It's comforting to know that nothing's changed just because you're sleeping with your employees," Wilson said philosophically. "Here, take a look at this." He tossed a pamphlet on House's desk.

House eyed it, and then raised an eyebrow at Wilson. "Real estate? Are you trying to one-up my bad relationship decisions by getting back together with Bonnie?"

"It's a loft," Wilson said. "It's huge." He raised his eyebrows giving House a pointed look. "There's an elevator."

House blinked. "That's your plan?"

Wilson shrugged, diffident, and sat down in House's chair like he expected to get kicked out at any moment. "I asked you to work it out, and you tried," he said. "That is, I assume you tried, based on not finding you passed out on my couch this morning."

House blushed, too faintly, he hoped, for Wilson to notice, especially since Wilson was carefully staring at the ceiling rather than at his embarrassment. He deliberately met Wilson's eyes for a moment, then slid the pamphlet over to his side of the desk with his fingertips. Examining it as if it might contain anthrax, or a stink bomb at the very least, he kept an eye on Wilson. Wilson twiddled his thumbs--literally; House rolled his eyes--and kept his eyes on the ceiling as if a pigeon was flapping around up there and he was worried about getting birdshit in his hair.

House pushed the pamphlet back across. "Foreman doesn't bug me about my meds," he said.

Wilson didn't fold on the ante. "I...might bug you about your meds."

"Foreman doesn't care if I see my shrink."

"I definitely care if you see your shrink."

"So you're going to be on my case all the time," House said. "Calling interventions. Checking my piss for opiates."

Wilson's poker tells were See Spot Run books compared to the NSA cryptography on his face right now. "I might do all those things."

House narrowed his eyes. "Well, I'm going to cover your toilet seat in Saran Wrap."

Wilson's chin descended, once. "That's...legitimate."

House nodded with him. "Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Okay." House took his cane and got to his feet. "You've already put a deposit down. Your offer's been accepted."

Wilson cracked, but since he'd already won the pot, House didn't hold it against him. "Who told you that?"

"Lucas," House said. "I told him I wanted to know when you moved."

Wilson pointed at him. "You _wanted_ to move in with me."

House twisted his mouth, not quite ready to commit to a smile. "I wanted to know when you were..."

"Better?"

"You won't get better," House said, heading for the door.

Wilson turned to walk with him. "That's what they teach you there?"

"Not very reassuring," House said. "Just true." He shrugged, and picked his jacket off the coat tree. "Come on, I'll let you buy me lunch."

"Naturally," Wilson said, and walked out at his shoulder.

* * *

There weren't any steps up to Foreman's front door. House could have jimmied his mailbox and left his ill-gotten key there, or simply shoved it under his door, and left it at that. Hell, he could have tossed it to Foreman at work to test his reflexes. Apparently, Foreman was decided on miffed resignation as the tone du jour for House's re-take-over of the department. He was as self-contained as a nuclear reactor, keeping to the differentials when he opened his mouth at all, but he didn't pull back when House looked at him sideways.

Thirteen kept smirking. Into her coffee, into the patient's chart. Whenever Taub asked what the hell was going on, she exclaimed, "Nothing!" and then burst into giggles.

House glared at her, exasperated, but whether Foreman considered this or not, it won't stay a secret. Wilson knew, and he was the chattiest Cathy on the damn planet. House would eat his motorcycle helmet if Foreman hadn't told Chase and Cameron, so that they can all commiserate about being helplessly drawn to House's animal magnetism. Taub's irritated glances at all three of them meant that he was on the verge of figuring them out. House gritted his teeth against the first crack to drop into a differential in Taub's Mojave desert sarcasm.

House didn't care. He took a case and they solved it, then they took another. He bought the world's most awesome couch for the loft, and Wilson claimed that if House hadn't been colourblind before, staring at the couch long enough would make it happen. House stalked Cuddy on a few dates, for old time's sake, but apparently she wasn't lying after all about Lucas being what she wanted. _For now_, House tacked on every time she said it, and Cuddy's lack of completely over-the-top denials confirmed it. However long it lasted, she'd still have Rachel. Wilson--Wilson was moving for him. Moving away from Amber, away from the past. When House shot a stare at Foreman, more often than not, Foreman was looking back.

"Is being happy really this difficult for you?" Nolan asked.

"I'm not happy," House said. "I'm fucking miserable."

"Oh," Nolan said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

"Don't get like Wilson," House said, refusing to give in. Nolan had cut him back to one session every two weeks, as long as his meds were working. So far, they were. That was probably about as much as he could ask for.hat was probably about as much as House could hope for. "I can only stand one meaningful smiler in my life at a time. You've had your chance, I'm moving back in with him now."

"Well," Nolan said. "You seem happy."

"I seem like I've drunk ten cups of espresso."

"You seem...animated," Nolan admitted. "Is there anything wrong with that?"

"Don't even start. People are going to be asking me that for the rest of my life.

"'This' is going to last long enough for people to ask you about it?"

"Don't throw my own words back in my face. They all know already, whether I do anything about it or not."

"You said, 'for the rest of my life'."

"It's not going to last."

Nolan nodded, considering that seriously. "Maybe not."

"The last time I _trusted_ somebody, she moved to Arizona."

"True," Nolan said. "But the question is--was it worth it? Will it be worth it again?"

Was it worth it to climb these fucking non-existent stairs and knock on Foreman's front door like his arm was moving through molasses? House propped himself on his cane, refusing to run, and a minute later, Foreman opened the door. His face stayed stony for a moment, but then his tension seeped out with a long breath. "You knocked," he said.

"You opened the door," House said, impatient. "Are we done being metaphorical and portentous?"

Foreman shrugged. "What do you want, House?"

He hadn't planned on being stuck in the hallway for this conversation, but he did put it off three weeks. Foreman has possibly earned his chance to be a jackass. Not that House will admit it. "Saying it doesn't mean anything," he said.

Foreman raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Apparently, _doing_ it doesn't mean anything."

House frowned at him. _Trust me_. Trust people. All that Nolan had ever guaranteed was that House would get hurt, over and over again. Trust meant anticipating betrayal. It won't work out between them, not even if they started with expectations that could be measured in single-digit degrees Kelvin. Trusting Foreman wasn't the question House came here to answer. "It might be worth it," he said. _I'm tired of fucking up._

Foreman seemed to see that. He opened the door wider. Before letting House in, he said, "House--I don't want you living here."

House nodded, once, a quick duck of his chin. "Bad idea," he agreed. "I don't like you, you don't like me."

"I didn't say that." Foreman tilted his head back, getting a ridiculous fond look in his eye. "You're here."

"No kidding," he said, and stomped inside before Foreman could put him off by spouting one more trite, obvious phrase. "I'm here."

Foreman nodded. "Okay," he said. And then, more firmly, "Okay."

The door was closed. Foreman's bed was less than thirty feet down the hall. Glaring at him, House crossed the room, and kissed his stupid, smug, smirking face.

No promises. Even without them, House was ready to try.

_end_


End file.
